B 17 and B24 Take off

This past week we had some war birds come to the little town of Blairsville , Georgia. We live in the far north part of Georgia. Maybe 6000 people in the County. So, it was exciting to see these on a very small airport in rural appalachia.

Do you guys know if there are other flying B-24's, one of the guys said this was the only one of it's kind still flying.
The P51 Mustang, sounded great and for it's time, really fast.

But the engines on the B-17 were just like you hear in the John Wayne movies of WWII.
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The engines on the B-24 are 14 cylinder Pratt & Whitney, cubic inch displacement of 1830 , the B-17 has 9 cylinder Wright Cyclones of 1820 cubic displacement. As you noticed, they have different sounds. I think that the B-24 you saw is the only one flying but there is another version of that airplane, "Diamond Lil" that is flying also. Wonderful to see those old birds, isn't it?

 

Nice shots, John! These are the same aircraft that I saw the week before in Greenville, and the Mustang is the same one that I posed my Ferrari with.

 

Collings Foundation & CAF both have one. Kermit's could be restored to flying condition.

 

The CAF's is a very early B-24A (or LB-30, if you prefer), which is a variant that never really saw much overseas service. The Collings B-24J seen here is much more representative of the Liberators that flew over Europe with the 8th Air Force.

It would be nice if someone would modify one of the ex-firebomber PB4Ys back to its military configuration, complete with R-1830s (though I somehow doubt that they would go that far). A side-by-side comparison of that aircraft with the CAF and Collings B-24s, thus showing the entire history of the type in three aircraft, would be fascinating.

 

Great shots John, I have been inside that B-24. Great sounds from those engines. I have to wonder if it's a wise idea to put so many miles on such a rare piece of history.

 

Good sounds from the B-17 and B-24 but a better one from the Lancaster with 4 Merlins singing only as they can.

 

I never get tired of planes like this. But, would not want to do a slow trip to china on one of them.

 

Yes... sounds like 4 Spits flying by...

but, it's pretty ungainly looking on the ground (OK, not as bad as the B-24).

The "Night Bombers" thread here is really good... (it's an hour or so long, in color, worth it).

 

Figure 165MPH at 27000 ft., -20 Deg. F, noisy as heck, and absolutely uncomfortable misery the entire time imprisoned in a stiff wrapping of multiple layers of everything you could find plus a stiff leather sheepskin suit over that . Good thing they couldn't fly that far. It would literally take all day and then some.

 

Which plane did they call the "Flying Coffin".

 

B-24... look at the shape of the fuselege, and, it didn't take much to make them just fall apart when hit... not like the B-17 that could take a lot of punishment.



But, I've also heard the B-26 called that, and the F-104 (and widowmaker).

 

The B-26 earned the widowmaker name because of its high wing loading. "No visible means of support" and "A plane a day into Tampa Bay" were famous B-26 sayings. But they had the lowest combat loss rate of any of the primary WW-II bombers, which included the B-26, B-25, B-24, B-29, and B-17.

 

I'm not in the bomber loop, does this mean there are 2 flying B-24's now?

with a stall speed just below 220kts or so, that comes up pretty quick when ill-fated pilots bleed off speed in hard banked turn. Falls out of the sky like a lead brick, no recovery possible. Approach speeds are critical, or fall out of the sky.

Glide ratio? ROFLMAO! A ridiculously tiny window after coming out of afterburner on a total engine failure.

 

Correct, Taz. The Martin B-26, " Baltimore Whore", earned the description by apparently lacking any visible means of support, as you said. A lot of the lift came from the air stream of the props. When an engine failed on take off, the asymmetrical thrust and the loss of lift on one side was a sure disaster if the pilot wasn't quick enough to take corrective action. I flew over Tampa Bay south of Drew and Mac Dill Fields after the war and when the tide and currents were right one could see wreckage on the bottom at the end of the runway. My late brother-in-law flew the B-26 out of New Guinea and he preferred it over the B-25 because of it's ability to take punishment but he said it was a handful. The "B" model had a wing extension to ease the wing loading problem and the Air Force promptly increased the bomb load , so it was back to square one. The pilots who flew this thing were a cross between a fighter pilot and a bomber pilot, kinda nuts in a way.