Too Little, Too Late - The B-32 Dominator

[JoeB]

Interestingly, our AF regularly flew recon missions over the USSR in B45s until the Mig 15 became operational and then the B47 took over that mission. There were some hairy moments between the B47s and Mig 15s but, as I recall, no B47s were ever downed.

I assume your flag means 'our AF' is the USAF . Actually the RB-45 units deeply penetrating the Soviet Union were RAF.

One USAF RB-45 was downed, the only one lost in combat, by Soviet MiG-15's over North Korea, December 4 1950, the first verifiable 'jet kill' by MiG-15's (several earlier claims against US jet fighters are not reflected in US records), and first jet fighter to down a jet bomber, bomber-type anyway.

At least 3 RB-47's were downed during the Cold War, two by MiG's and one by SAM's.

This is a decent list of incidents on the web
Intrusions, Overflights, Shootdowns and Defections During the Cold War and Thereafter

Two books are "Spyflights of the Cold War" by Lashmar and "By any Means Necessary" by Burrows.

Note most of those incidents happened on the peripheries of the USSR, flights not really intended to violate Soviet air space, or only marginally, sometimes accidentally. Many of the a/c intercepted were in intl airspace as the US claimed at the time. The British effort (with US cooperation) was in contrast to fly deep into the Soviet Union, as were of course the U-2 flights later.

Joe

 

[Matt308]

Blind Man's Bluff - A fantastic book of cold war operations. And the publicly known casualties are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Aircraft from B-50s to C-130s were victims of interceptors whose coordinates were most often outside of "enemy" territory.

 

[BurntFanger]

i enjoyed this post as my fathers unit in ww2 was the 312th and he talked about the b-32 and interesting note is the 312th started the war as a light attack sq usung p-40's then the A-24(army version od the dauntless) then they moved yo to med attack with the A-20 i have some old photos and will try to scan them and share

 

[Catch22]

Looking forward to that!

 

[syscom3]

i enjoyed this post as my fathers unit in ww2 was the 312th and he talked about the b-32 and interesting note is the 312th started the war as a light attack sq usung p-40's then the A-24(army version od the dauntless) then they moved yo to med attack with the A-20 i have some old photos and will try to scan them and share

I just received a book about them.

"Rampage of the the Roaring 20's "

 

[Messy1]

Blind Man's Bluff - A fantastic book of cold war operations. And the publicly known casualties are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Aircraft from B-50s to C-130s were victims of interceptors whose coordinates were most often outside of "enemy" territory.

I own that book Matt. I have read it a few times, very informative and entertaining. Once I start reading it I cannot put it down.

 

[Waynos]

I assume your flag means 'our AF' is the USAF . Actually the RB-45 units deeply penetrating the Soviet Union were RAF.


Joe

Not really. They were painted up with fake RAF markings but they were manned by USAF crews and operated entirely on behalf of the USAF, source for that being 'Aerial Espionage' by Dick van der Aart. Now there must have been a reason for this but as I no longer have the book I cannot look it up. can anyone else help?

edit to add, I just looked the B-45 in the appendix of Putnams Aircraft of the Royal Air Force and it states that four RB-45 were operated by RAF and USAF personnel (contradicting what I wrote above somewhat) they operated out of RAF Sculthorpe but belonged to the 19th Tactical Recconaissance Squadron, USAF. It still doesn't say why though.

 

[Marshall_Stack]

I just received a book about them.

"Rampage of the the Roaring 20's "

I tried Googling that book and couldn't find anything....

 

[Niceoldguy58]

I thought it would be appropriate to add some hard-won facts to the discussion on the B-32. Too many fairy tales have arisen about the aircraft over the many decades since she disappeared.

Where to start? I suppose the first place is that all this information comes from documents and photos gathered for a new book on the B-32 by me (Alan Griffith, author of "Consolidated Mess, Vol I" and Nick Veronico, author of many books). This book will, I believe, be the definitive book on the B-32 Dominator/Terminator and we plan to have it to the publisher a bit later this year. I estimate that in photos alone, some 90% have never been seen. While there may be some manual drawings used in the book, the emphasis at all times has been original documents, reports, drawings and photos.

Anyway, while it is true that more emphasis went into the B-29, it needs to be understood that Boeing had begun the process that would result in the B-29 as early as with the Y1B-20 series (Model 316, 316A/B/C/D) . Consolidated was making a huge jump with the B-24 and its inexperience with building big bombers showed in many ways.

Rather than get into the many delays in the B-32 program here, I will share that by late 1944-early 1945 General Arnold ordered that Consolidated should pump out B-32's as quickly as possible. No more delays were to be accepted and personnel from the B-36 program should be moved over to the B-32 as needed. THe B-32 was going to used to pound Japan into dust, so they needed a lot of them. I have a schedule showing the replacement of B-24s in all parts of the Pacific, the CBI and finally the Aleutians (there in November, 1946) by month. THe pressure to produce B-32s would continue to grow until it suddenly ended and the program cancelled. There were a number of reasons for this. The Atomic Bomb is an obvious cause, but not the only one by any means. The Bomb had been kept completely secret (except to the spies, of course), so it wasn't until it became necessary to let Arnold in on the secret and start training B-29 crews to drop it that they decided to pull the plug on the B-32. In addition, a number of very telling arguments had been made along the way that the B-29 was a better, cheaper aircraft and that it was ALREADY IN MASS PRODUCTION and in combat.

Had the B-32 been in production a year earlier, I have no doubt that B-24's would have been gone in the proverbial heartbeat. Also, keep in mind that the manner in which the B-29's were ultimately used - low to medium altitudes and increasingly at night - would have fit perfectly into the B-32's capabilities. My only real question is whether or not they would have been sent to Europe or dedicated to the Pacific. I lean to the latter as I'm not convinced Doolittle et al would be enthusiastic about having to establish yet another logistical trail for a new, untested aircraft at the same time they were trying to make the 8AF an all-B17 unit as it was.

There has been much said about the poor quality of the B-32. My research has not shown this to be the case any more than it was in the early B-29's. The causes for the problems appears to have been due to the number of new and untried systems incorporated into the design and, even more so, the jump from working out the bugs and into full production in such a short time.

Finally, the B-32 was a Fort Worth aircraft, NOT San Diego. There was discussion about starting a second production line in San Diego, but that never came to fruition.

There is so much to be told in the story of the B-32 that has never been touched upon that it is a bit difficult to know where to begin and where to end in an admittedly limited format such as this. I promise to keep everyone appraised of the progress on "Dominator - The Untold Story of the B-32" and will be glad to answer what questions I can about the aircraft itself.

Respectfully submitted,

Alan Griffith