B24 ceiling vs. B17 ceiling

ThomasP said:

I just ran across a couple more B-17F fuel load numbers that vary a little bit, added them to my my previous post

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The B-29 has some variations in its fuel capacity as well, even between different official military publications.

EwenS said:

The reason that there were not many B-24 sorties in the 8th AF in 1943 was twofold:-

1. There were not many B-24 BG present in the early / mid part of 1943; and
2. The earliest arrivals were transferred to the MTO to support Operation Husky & later operations against Northern Italy & southern Germany from North Africa

So we start with:-
93rd BG which was transferred to the MTO between Dec 1942 & 22nd Feb 1943 and again between 26th June & 27th Aug
44th BG in MTO between 28th June 1943 & 25th Aug and again from 17th Sept to 4th Oct.
389th BG arrived in Britain in June/July 1943 and was almost immediately sent to the MTO 3rd July & 23rd August and again 19th Sept to 3rd Oct

These 3 BG all participated in the ill-fated Ploesti mission, Operation Tidal Wave, on 1 Aug 1943.

The next B-24 BG in the 8th AF were:-
482nd BG (Pathfinder) (2 squadrons with the other 2 B-17 equipped). First mission 27 Sept 1943
392nd BG first mission 9 Dec 1943.
445th BG first mission 13 Dec 1943
446th BG first mission 16 Dec 1943
448th BG first mission 22 Dec 1943

Other 8th AF B-24 BG arived later and began to fly missions in 1944.

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Actually, there weren't that many B-24s in total. From the Statistical Digest Tables 88 and 91.



Boeing was quicker off the mark than Consolidated.



Also note that the cooperation within the BVD group allowed Douglas and Lockheed to ramp up much faster than the B-24 plants did. Willow Run and its associated plants in Fort Worth and Tulsa took a long time to get going.



Note that the first 800 B-24s produced by Willow Run (490 in Willow Run, the rest knock downs) were not suitable for combat and did not go overseas. The first useful B-24 from Willow Run came out in July 1943. Consolidated San Diego followed a similar growth curve to Boeing but was generally about a month behind.

As for the vaunted productivity of Willow Run, it took a long time to get there.

33k in the air said:

Nah, no one ever makes mistakes on this forum. We're all too clever for that.




The crew lists for the 392nd Bomb Group don't show this. For example: 4 Jan. 1944, 21 March 1944, 2 June 1944. All have ten crew as standard. In July 1944, it dropped to nine for those aircraft no longer carrying a ball turret gunner. Examples: 6 July 1944, 16 Aug. 1944, 27 Sept. 1944.




For 106 Squadron, out of 4,414 Lancaster sorties with the crew listed from July 1942 through April 1945: 4,082 had seven crew members listed; 327 had eight crew members; 4 had six crew; and 1 had nine. Of the 327 sorties which had eight aboard: 237 carried a second pilot; 48 carried a second navigator; 26 carried a second bombardier; 9 carried a passenger; 2 carried a second flight engineer; 1 carried a controller; and 1 carried a second radio operator. (3 did not have the position of the extra crew member listed.)

For 408 Squadron on its Lancaster II operations: 1,234 sorties had crew members listed, of which 684 had seven crew, 527 had eight crew, 22 had nine crew, and 1 had six. Of the 527 sorties with eight aboard: 206 carried a ventral turret gunner, and 93 carried a second pilot. (228 did not list the position of the extra crewman.) Of the 22 with nine crew aboard: 15 carried a second pilot and a ventral turret gunner, while the other 7 did not have the extra positions listed.

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Here is the justification for eliminating the B-24 ball turret. The ball turret saw very little action in comparison to the other gun positions.

Reluctant Poster said:

I started a spreadsheet years ago. I believe the original source was Freeman, but the latest version is based on this:

Search Missions | American Air Museum

www.americanairmuseum.com

The numbers from this website seem to match up with other data I have collected .

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Thanks for the URL, 3 test raid days follow. Tons of bombs, Atk = attacked.

8th Air Force mission 121 to Germany on 5 November 1943
First set of data from Richard Davis, the second from Mighty Eighth War Diary. Each set has its advantages, the war diary supplies a list of sent, attacking and lost by division and bomb group, plus write offs, damaged aircraft and personnel losses, along with kill claims, but does not break out the attacks on the oil refineries or the aiming method. The war diary notes enable identification of the aircraft types by target, including the pair of single aircraft attacks, but it does not list the attacks separately, only in the notes. VIII Bomber Command 121 | American Air Museum replaces the War Diary MIA with KIA, PoW and EVD and breaks the bomb tonnage down by division, 384.52+354.78 = 739.3 tons of bombs by B-17, 284.05 tons by B-24 but otherwise is the same as the War Diary, including the 11 sortie / 9 attacking B-17 pathfinders, 3/2 for the 3rd Division, 4/3 for the 1st Division, 4/4 for the 2nd Division. So bundled up in the Munster tonnage are B-17 and B-24 attacks. The B-24 did not have fighter escort.

8th Air Force mission 164 to France on 24 December 1943
General notes as before, War Diary listing in Bombardment Division order, VIII Bomber Command 164 | American Air Museum follows the War Diary figures and says 23 V weapons sites, the Richard Davis figures list 20.

8th Air Force mission 174 to Germany on 4 January 1944
War Diary listing, 1, 3 then 2 Bombardment Division. The War Diary has a major change in format on 1 January 1944, listing by division instead of group and not giving the breakdown of bombs dropped. It has 7 B-17 and 34 B-24 hitting targets of opportunity, Davis has 30 such attacks counting Wesel. 8th Air Force 174 | American Air Museum follows the War Diary data, 253 tons of bombs by the B-24, 365 by 3rd BD, 451 tons by 1st BD on Kiel and 192 tons on Munster, total 1,261.

8th Air Force Diary of Bomber Operations, mission 174, 4 January 1944
Despatched is less spares. The difference with Richard Davis is the single sortie attacking Wesel which would be a pathfinder aircraft if correct (H2X) and from the Munster raid. Kill claims 0/1/2 by the 201 aircraft attacking Kiel and 8/1/2 by the 82 aircraft attacking Kiel, total 8/2/4, the war diary says 4/12/4, the web site says 4/12/4 by the B-24.

Reluctant Poster said:

Here is the justification for eliminating the B-24 ball turret. The ball turret saw very little action in comparison to the other gun positions.

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How does that compare with the use of the ball turret in the B-17?

Reluctant Poster said:

Here is the justification for eliminating the B-24 ball turret. The ball turret saw very little action in comparison to the other gun positions.

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So for 8th AF in May 1944 it was cost v benefit - weight & drag v kill rate. But the main driver AIUI was weight saving.

But all B-24s continued to roll off the production line with the ball turret fitted, and that fits with the statement in para 7b of the document posted. So removal was a "local" theatre modification.

"Consolidated Mess" by Alan Griffith notes
"Some 8th AF veterans have reported that it was not uncommon to place ball-turreted equipped B-24s on the sides and bottom of a combat 'box', and the non-turreted aircraft within."

Over in the Pacific Gen Kennedy had authorised removal of the ball turrets from 5th Air Force B-24 in early/mid 1943. BUT in this case it was purely a weight saving measure. The Hawaiian Air Depot (HAD) then modified all B-24s of all models destined for 5th AF by removing the ball turret and replacing it with "a handheld, hand moved, giant scarf ring with little visibility" with a large Plexiglas cover, containing 2x0.5". Those bypassing the HAD seem to have retained the ball turret.

On the other hand 7th & 13th AF wanted the ball turrets retained, but an open hand held twin 0.5" mount replaced the tail turret. Again these mods were carried out by HAD.

And from the introduction of the B-24L all the aircraft were delivered from the factory to the modification centres without any tail armament. There they were fitted out with the tail armament to suit theatre requirements, whether that was A6B turrets, hand held mounts or the M6/M6A hand held but hydraulically assisted tail mount.

Jugman said:

I wish I had the puff pieces on the use of statistics by the AAF in WW2. They were both aimed at highschoolers to get them interested statistics. One of them was an interview with of the many hundreds of statisticians that served with the 8th AF. The other was an interview with an 8th AF General. I believe it was Doolittle but don't hold me to that. In both articles they offhandedly cite keeping the loss rate between the the B-17 and B-24 equal -to maintain unit moral- as an example of the use of statistics by the 8th AF.

Then there is this:View attachment 700619View attachment 700620View attachment 700621View attachment 700622View attachment 700623

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In talking to an 8th AF B17 pilot some years ago he told me that, 1. They lied to the public about the losses. 2. The B-17 was slower than advertised and 3. He would not fly a B24 at all. Given #1 I would think ALL the loss figures were skewed. Did they "keep two sets of books"? Did they correct the "public numbers" at wars end of was the real losses sent to the circular file to protect careers? Yeah I have trust issues.

Did they lie about losses, or were losses an element of information that for OPSEC purposes were not publicized?

Something to also keep in mind about the B-24:
It was a handful to fly under ideal conditions.

Did it have good range and payload? Yes.

But here is the caveat: if it took any damage, it was nearly impossible to keep airborn.

An acquaintance related first-hand about the stress of the assembly prossess over England and then heading to target. The effort of keeping a bomb-laden B-24 in formation taxed both he and his Co-Pilot and more than once, had to jettison his bombs before the target after being hit by flak, in order to keep his Liberator airborne.

He was able to survive his two tours, but had a long list of fellow pilots who did not.

As vaunted as the B-24 is in many circles, it was not the perfect machine that many make it out to be.

In the case that a US pilot didnt like the aircraft he was asked to fly, what was the procedure for providing him with a mount that fitted his requirements?

A firm kick in the butt i think.

"ok i need volunteers to fly the B-24"

"put your F****ng hands down, I am picking the volunteers !"

pbehn said:

In the case that a US pilot didnt like the aircraft he was asked to fly, what was the procedure for providing him with a mount that fitted his requirements?

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They could put in for a transfer, but they still had to do their assignments until it was approved - but, during the war, if a guy was good at his job, chances were slim that a CO was going to let him go.

GrauGeist said:

They could put in for a transfer, but they still had to do their assignments until it was approved - but, during the war, if a guy was good at his job, chances were slim that a CO was going to let him go.

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Thats what I thought, even when a type suffered huge losses other pilots didnt refuse to fly it like the B-26 for instance..

pbehn said:

Thats what I thought, even when a type suffered huge losses other pilots didnt refuse to fly it like the B-26 for instance..

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My Uncle Jimmy was a P-36 pilot but after Pearl Harbor, was assigned to the P-39, which he held in absolute contempt.

When the AAF was looking for P-38 pilots during their workup, he jumped at the opportunity even though he held reservations about a large, twin-engine fighter being any good.

However, he was willing to try anything that would get him away from the Airacobra!

Icorps1970 said:

In talking to an 8th AF B17 pilot some years ago he told me that, 1. They lied to the public about the losses.

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I doubt this. While hiding losses was frequent in Axis press, in U.S. news outlets did not seem to do this.

For example, regarding the 6 March 1944 raid against Berlin, in which 69 bombers and 11 fighters were lost to enemy action, the New York Times report on the raid published the next day mentions the losses at the end of the article:


The losses are nearly identical to the actual losses, with the difference in the heavy bomber total likely an accounting error. Accurate losses were balanced in the reporting by uncritical repetition earlier in the article of the (overestimated) claims of the damage inflicted by the bombers and the number of German fighters shot down.

I second that. In many war time journals ( youtube us a good source there) it was made very clear this was not a walk in the park. They even filmed and broadcast the stricken ones that didnt made it just to the runway. Blew up, caught fire, ambulances, dead crew. In Europa pacific the lot. In their own way they were allowed to show how terrible it could be and often was. To bad after ww2 that went overboard.

GrauGeist said:

Something to also keep in mind about the B-24:
It was a handful to fly under ideal conditions.

Did it have good range and payload? Yes.

But here is the caveat: if it took any damage, it was nearly impossible to keep airborn.

An acquaintance related first-hand about the stress of the assembly prossess over England and then heading to target. The effort of keeping a bomb-laden B-24 in formation taxed both he and his Co-Pilot and more than once, had to jettison his bombs before the target after being hit by flak, in order to keep his Liberator airborne.

He was able to survive his two tours, but had a long list of fellow pilots who did not.

As vaunted as the B-24 is in many circles, it was not the perfect machine that many make it out to be.

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It is not only the B-24. If laden to the brim and some ack ack punctures a you like a porcupine any airplane will have trouble. Holland is still littered with un exploded unarmed bombs dropped from planes in trouble. The north sea even worse.
Now i do see your point. But in the other hand the 24 made many many raids far beyond other airframes. Many hours airtime with tanks etc.
I am not convinced of how less of an airframe it was. Just an opinion.

GrauGeist said:

They could put in for a transfer, but they still had to do their assignments until it was approved - but, during the war, if a guy was good at his job, chances were slim that a CO was going to let him go.

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If, on the other hand, the pilot refused to fly, he would be quickly and quietly transferred to avoid contagion.

Snautzer01 said:

It is not only the B-24. If laden to the brim and some ack ack punctures a you like a porcupine any airplane will have trouble. Holland is still littered with un exploded unarmed bombs dropped from planes in trouble. The north sea even worse.
Now i do see your point. But in the other hand the 24 made many many raids far beyond other airframes. Many hours airtime with tanks etc.
I am not convinced of how less of an airframe it was. Just an opinion.

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As mentioned, it was a handful to fly under ideal conditions compared to comparable types.

The Davis wing provided several advantages, however, if it became damaged (flak, cannon fire, etc.), the aircraft became very difficult to manage.

On the otherhand, the Lancaster and B-17 for example, had good handling characteristics both laden and clean and were known to be relatively manageable after being damaged.

Of course, they were not impervious to catastrophic damage, but did have the ability to absorb considerable damage and remain airborn.