Picture of the day. (3 Viewers)

[Greg Boeser]

9th AF in Med flew B-25s, B-26s, and A-20s. Redesignated 12 AF in late 1943.
9th AF reconstituted in England flew B-26s, A-20s. Both AFs started replacing said types with A-26s late '44.
Much was made of the B-26's accident rate, but the A-20 was way worse.

 

[Shortround6]

9th AF in Med flew B-25s, B-26s, and A-20s. Redesignated 12 AF in late 1943.
9th AF reconstituted in England flew B-26s, A-20s. Both AFs started replacing said types with A-26s late '44.
Much was made of the B-26's accident rate, but the A-20 was way worse.

Perhaps because there were NO two seat conversion trainers?
Stick the student in the cockpit, give him a 20-30 minute lecture standing on the wing root. Jump off and wave him away.
Cut down on instructor fatalities.

 

[Frog]

If I remember correctly, it was Doolittle who insisted that US medium bomber groups in ETO should be equipped with the B-26, which seems ironic as he used B-25s for the 30 seconds over Tpkyo.

 

[Zippythehog]

Not even the Fighting Red Tails can make that claim.

Of course most B-26 combat was in the ETO. And in the book "Flying the B-26 Over Europe" the author, a navigator, explains why. They went to the RAF and asked for advice. The RAF told them that it took something like 5 min for the Germans to figure out the speed and direction of a flight of aircraft and lay an ambush box barrage. So if you are flying around Europe in daylight, you should change direction less than every 5 min and thus throw off the Germans' AAA targeting. USAAF Heavies could not do that and such ambushes were less effective against them anyway since they were 1 or 2 miles higher and larger guns were needed compared to the B-26's at 15,000 ft.

So the lower loss rate of the B-26 was very likely due to the rather extreme but effective tactics employed in the ETO. It seems that B-26's in the ETO almost never did low altitude work and strafing, despite those package guns on the side.

Postwar the B-26 was gone in a flash, and although the B-25 was no longer used as a bomber either, even before the end of WW2 it was being adopted as a multiengined trainer, where it had been found to be much less dangerous than the AT-9's, AT-11's and other small twins. The B-25 stayed on as a trainer and general hack transport for the USAF and ANG until at least 1955, with some photos showing there were still some left in 1965. They were also used for mosquito spraying.

B-25 was a trike, the ATs were tailwheel. I would expect the landing gear configuration to factor significantly in ease of training. Also, the B-25 had a higher MTOW than the ATs. After the war, none of the bombers in service were tailwheel. The twin vertical stabs on the Mitchell also aided SE handling.
Since about 10,000 B-25s were built, they had a lot of spares to draw from.

 

[Greg Boeser]

If I remember correctly, it was Doolittle who insisted that US medium bomber groups in ETO should be equipped with the B-26, which seems ironic as he used B-25s for the 30 seconds over Tpkyo.

You would have had to strap all active USN fleet carriers end to end to get enough flight deck to launch a B-26.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Doolittle was assigned the task of rehabilitating the reputation of the B-26 in 1942 when the accident rate was well over 100 per 100,000 hours.

 

[special ed]

He flew an airshow for the new butterbars in the early short wing B-26. Then the newbies listened to the instructors. In one of my books, I remember a New Guinea pilot making a single engine takeoff to save the B-26 from the approaching Japanese.

 

[MIflyer]

I would expect the landing gear configuration to factor significantly in ease of training.

Yes, and a B-25 could fly on one engine comfortably while the trainers often could barely manage it and became almost uncontrollable. Even for later light twins the airplane had a higher probability of a fatal mishap if it lost an engine than did single engined airplanes if they lost one. Hence the old saying that the 2nd engine is intended to enable the aircraft to arrive at the crash site promptly.

A friend of mine was 9th PRS Maintenance Chief in India and they had acquired a B-25 originally intended for the Dutch as a hack transport. Unfortunately the Dutch had specified such reduced fuel tankage that the choices were 1. Carry enough gas with a tank in the bomb bay to have decent range or 2. Carry bombs in the bomb bay but be unable to get anywhere. Coming back from one trip the pilots trimmed it up and went back to play cards. My friend got in the pilot's seat and flew the airplane back to their base, the pilot only putting down his cards when they were on final.

And one of the big advantages of the B-25 was that with the big canopy over the pilots, transparent nose, and big windows at the waist gunner positions you could get a good view of everything, not true of most multiengined aircraft.

 

[MIflyer]

367 FG 392 FS Lt Livingston's P-38

 

[MIflyer]

It does look like her, but where's Ginger?

344BG Lt Seth Stansted's B-26

 

[SaparotRob]

I love Dawn Welles.

 

[Viking1066]

She was gorgeous!

 

[MiTasol]

Women at war - WRENS fitting bombs to some sort of trainer. I am sure someone can identify both the bombs and aircraft.

According to the source site it is smoke bombs and a Gladiator but I see some errors in some captions (like calling an Oxford an Anson) so will await confirmation.

and from another photo received today and Reverse Image Search & Photo Lookup | Find Similar Image I cracked where all these photos have come from.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8270787@N07/sets/72157605269786717/show

Nine pages with many goodies - and probably at better resolution than what I received and posted.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Open cockpit, so not a Gladiator.
Looks like rocket rails inboard.
Swordfish?

 

[MIflyer]

Interesting facts:

Supposedly neither Mary Ann nor Ginger wore the same clothes twice on the show.

Dawn Wells personally cut her shorts that way, knowing she would have to compete with Tina.

P.S. You mean there really are people named "Reno"?

 

[GTX]

Definitely a Swordfish

 

[MiTasol]

Open cockpit, so not a Gladiator.
Looks like rocket rails inboard.
Swordfish?

Those are standard RAF bomb racks inboard

 

[syscom3]

P-47s crammed into the hangar deck of USS Block Island (CVE-21) for transport to Europe, July 1943

 

[Wurger]

 

[syscom3]

The last B29 lost during WW2.

The B29 "thunderbird" (6th BS, 29th BG) takes a fatal hit in the engine over Tokyo, Aug 8 1945.

Two managed to bail out with one being executed when captured. The other one survived the war.

What is that marking below the wing between the engines? It looks like a "10". Any ideas?