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What do you do after you've ditched a B-24 in the James, whip out a comb and make sure you're good for the ladies...The B-24 Liberator had notoriously catastrophic ditching capabilities due to it's bomb bay design and overall lighter construction than the more robust B-17 Flying Fortress. Even under the most controlled nearly perfect conditions, the B-24 would always break it's back and rapidly sink, even if it didn't disintegrate on impact. The first video shows a controlled ditching in the James River off of Newport News, Virginia in 1944 conducted the NACA Langley Research Center. The shallow water adjacent to the James River Bridge and ditching with the aircraft traveling towards land prevented its sinking.
The second video is a 1944 USAAF "propaganda" training film for flight crews, "Ditch and Live." Your chances of survival were better in a B-17, but the B-17 wasn't a duck bred to land on water.
In Unbroken, Louis Zamperrini gives a first hand account of the B-24 crash landing at sea. He describes the landing as more of crash than a ditch.What do you do after you've ditched a B-24 in the James, whip out a comb and make sure you're good for the ladies...
Man, those two guys got out of the Liberator and stood around like all they did was drive to the park, talk about cool.
I don't doubt it, man that sucker landing in the James cracked in half in a heartbeat.Somewhere on this site is another thread about this. Most of the info came from Pilot's Notes with some saying, "Do not attempt to ditch this aircraft"