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Perhaps because there were NO two seat conversion trainers?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.
Not even the Fighting Red Tails can make that claim.
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.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.
You would have had to strap all active USN fleet carriers end to end to get enough flight deck to launch a B-26.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.
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.I would expect the landing gear configuration to factor significantly in ease of training.
Open cockpit, so not a Gladiator.
Looks like rocket rails inboard.
Swordfish?