Consolidated B-24 Liberator | Great American Aircraft | Upscaled

[Music] the idea for the consolidated b-24 liberator came in the late 1930 when the army air corps realized the need for a long-range heavy bomber that would not only be a counterpart to the older b-17 but would surpass it in performance flying faster with a wider range and with more bombs to deliver to the target many thought that the designers of the b-24 had succeeded in their quest to make a better bomber and on august 1 1943 and one of the most important allied air attacks of the war the b-24 would get the chance to prove itself in the most difficult of conditions 176 consolidated b-24 liberators carrying over a thousand american aviators were to strike the oil refineries around cloeste concentration available german aircraft and i think they also had romanian air force aircraft also oh yeah we heard a lot about it during training and we were expecting to fly palestine when we got there these targets supplied hitler's war machine with almost 60 percent of its oil products if plesti could be destroyed the german army could be stopped in its tracks and the luftwaffe's fighters starve for fuel the general lewis brereton commander in chief of the middle east air forces and the man who ordered the attack 50 losses would be a small price to pay if such success could be gained raritan insisted that the bombers go in on the deck and bomb from 250 feet the group commanders as well as the commander of the ninth air force protested the order in writing brereton refused to relent the mission he felt was too important velesti had to be destroyed for 2 400 miles the bombers hugged the earth on route to target each group have one of the refineries and their targets they were to stay at low level all the way across the mediterranean to stay out of radar contact then cross over yugoslavia into romania the mission began to unravel as soon as the liberators took off from their benghazi area airfields nearby watching the american planes get aloft and head out northward were three german spies [Music] they would not be caught until april of 1944 so on this day their fervent warnings to german headquarters on crete would doom hundreds of american airmen the mission had been compromised the germans knew the liberators were coming and they'd be waiting over the mediterranean sea things got worse in the lead group the 376th a b-24 flown by captain glenn flavell suddenly pitched up and out of formation wingo wango the name of the b-24 stalled then fell into the sea with a tremendous explosion pavel's wingman disobeyed standing orders and turned back to the crash site hoping to drop a rubber life raft to any survivors they found none and when the b-24 swung back round on course the 376th was too far ahead to catch reluctantly they turned for africa carrying with them the deputy lead navigator for the entire mission that would not have been a critical error had not the mission's lead navigator gone down with flavell's wingo wango as it was the two most experienced navigators who had been specially trained for this complicated attack were now out of the equation colonel keith compton the 376th group's commander now took over navigating the ravers tuploeste over yugoslavia compton's pilots ran into heavy cloud cover as they neared a mountain range as they climbed through the clouds to get over the peaks below the b-24s briefly reached 16 000 feet a nearby german radar set detected the bombers axis fighters from all over the balkans were scrambled to stop beyond rushing liberators passing the mountains compton dove his group back down on the deck as they reformed just above the ground the 376th was alone weather had scattered the other groups the strike would go in piecemeal the plan had called for the bombers to make their attack from the north swinging around plowesty before turning south to come in from the most unexpected direction compton however made a serious navigational error his crew mistook the initial point and turned too early hurtling the 376th not at plosty but at bucharest three of the other four groups also suffered some sort of navigational lapse [Music] the remaining group colonel john killer kane's 98th was the only one to fly the assigned route and get to ploesti on time rather than one hammer blow the raiders dribbled into ploesti from different directions from 250 feet the b-24s that reached their oil refinery targets were greeted by thousands of anti-aircraft bursts scores of tracers from machine guns and placed near their targets and by 320 german romanian and bulgarian fighters [Music] in the end it was pure carnage the liberators dumped their five hundred and thousand pound bombs on the vulnerable refiners when they detonated they blew huge chunks of debris hundreds of feet into the air pon-rushing liberators had to dodge the flying cascade of metal as their bombardiers fought desperately to pick out a good spot to toggle their bombs one b-24 was nearly swatted out of the sky by the top of one of the enormous oil storage tanks that had been blown off by a direct hit other b-24s followed on the heels of the first wave all around the flames and smoke were belching from blazing oil tanks and lines through the smoke the liberators emerged sweeping around the 210 foot smokestacks as anti-aircraft fires savaged their ranks individually they toggled their bombs then dove back down the ground level and sped frantically for home the germans had a flat train at cloestie and the canny foo raced along the tracks almost facing the bombers the black planes were going around 50 60 miles an hour as the planes came in at 150 160 180 depending and they were just paralleling and as they came down the valley the flat guns were just hitting them and they became some pretty sharp targets for the for the flat gunners the a.a gunners had point-blank targets that required little lead they couldn't miss [Music] bomber after bomber brewed up into brilliant incandescent explosions shedding wings engines and tails as they billowed into the ground several times liberators were caught in the flames flaring up from the damaged refineries below colonel john kane's b-24 went right through one such funnel of fire when the 98th came in kane turned at the proper place went to his proper target but he found his target was already in flames and instead of aborting it he said we're going to go on stay on our course and just go in and go according to plan so he brought his planes right in through the smoke and through the fire bombs were exploding planes were going through out of the 98 he lost 22 aircraft so that's out of 40 40 50 planes they lost 22 alone [Music] [Music] last into ploessie came the 389th bottom row smoke and fire almost totally obscured their targets but still they clung to their mission wrote captain philip ardrey a squadron leader in the 389th already the flames were leaping higher than the level of our approach and there were intermittent explosions lighting up the black paw a gauntlet of tracers and cannon fire of all types made me despair of ever covering those last few hundred yards artery's wingman lieutenant hughes was hit in the left wing from a gaping hole fuel began gushing out an instant later the torrent caught fire and a tongue of flame blasted back from the wing and totally engulfed the fuselage and tail hughes held his liberator on course soon the entire left wing was ablaze the b-24 had only seconds to live but hughes bombardier released their bombs scoring direct hits on the refinery the bomber came off target and hughes turned for a nearby river hoping to save his crew but the plane began sagging toward the ground and as they came to the river hughes was forced to try to climb over a bridge the liberator had no life left and the maneuver caused it to pitch over and cartwheel across the river's muddy bank with the 389th attack complete all of the b-24s were now racing for home but they would not escape unarmed hundreds of german interceptors waded in and the exhausted gunners fought with all the intensity of trapped animals it was not enough more and more b-24s smacked into the balkan's countryside leaving a trail of burning wreckage from plowesty all the way through yugoslavia [Music] 73 b-24s went down on this pro-sd raid 50 alone over enemy territory another 55 were damaged over 500 american airmen were killed or wounded about another hundred were captured [Music] five men including hughes and cain received the medal of honor this raid over pilosi really demonstrated the courage and the dedication that the american airmen involved in the mission possessed and that did not go unrecognized by the high command in the mediterranean and in the end there were five airmen on that mission who were awarded the the medal of honor which is america's highest award for bravery and there has been no mission since and there was no mission before that garnered so many medal of honor winners it really stands as a testament to not only the bravery of the cruise but also to the difficulties and that harrowing experience of what it was like in the inferno over ploesty brereton claimed sixty percent of plosti's production capability had been destroyed in reality while the destruction the raid caused had been heavy boeste's refineries had not been operating in full capacity at the time of the raid the germans and romanians mitigated the damage by bringing online previously unused sections of their facilities would go on pumping oil into the heart of the german war machine never again would the b-24s go in on the deck for the next two years plowesti would be pounded time and again by the 15th air force's massive force of liberators by the time the russians captured the target little was left but scorched and twisted metal far from one lightning stroke it took scores of missions 360 lost b-24s and over a year to finish off plesty in the meantime to the airmen forced to attack it the name ploesti would be etched in their nightmares for the rest of their lives they knew that plo esti was one of the most heavily defended targets in the world not just in europe but in the world with 128 millimeter anti-aircraft guns on rails plus 88 plus the light flack the medium flak if anybody came back at low altitude again it was a it was an inferno it was a cauldron and we lost hundreds of bombers over ploesty lots and lots of men and so to the crews who flew those missions it was one of the roughest things they probably experienced in their lives the plane that the men rode into the inferno over ploesti that day in 1944 stemmed from a late 1930s call by the u.s army air corps for another heavy bomber that could complement the b-17 consolidated's model 32 won the design competition and on december 29 1939 the first prototype took flight dubbed the xb24 the plane immediately impressed the army air corps fast capable of carrying more bombs in the b-17 over a longer range the new bomber had the striking power that the army coveted a lot of pilots didn't like the b-24s but i loved it i i just thought the v24ds and these were just a real good airplane you had to fly them it wasn't like a 17 the 17 you know was a floater it was like a c-47 or such it had a big uh wing and uh the b-24 had what they called a davis uh airfoil which was a narrow wing that you had to have more speed for takeoff and landings while the 17 landed at a lower speed and so forth and the b-24 carried more bombs than the b-17 and and was faster than 17. but the b-24 was built um during the war for the purpose like the liberty ships they were just for the battle and after the battle was over they got rid of all the b-24s but i i liked the b24 i i felt comfortable in it indeed the plane attracted so much notice that by 1940 both the british and french had placed large orders for it called the lb-30 and raf service the bomber initially served with coastal command where it hunted german u-boats in the atlantic [Music] in 1942 the first b-24d variants arrived to join operational usaf bomb groups for the max speed of 300 miles per hour at 25 000 feet the liberator was some 20 to 30 miles per hour faster than the older b-17 its four pratt whitney r-1830 twin wasp engines produced a total of 4 800 horsepower [Music] 10 50 caliber machine guns protected it from enemy interceptors while its mammoth bomb bays could hold up to 12 500 pounds of ordnance [Music] at first glance the b-24 appeared to be the ultimate strategic bomber one with which the army air force could crush nazi germany's industrial base for all its assets the b-24 had a number of very serious flaws that made it far less beloved by its crews than the b-17 most serious the liberator could not take nearly the beating the flying fortress could it seems to me that about half of our emissions we had malfunctions of one type or another either caused by the combat or sometimes just just happened get halfway to the target and one of the engines would go completely out oil would spurt out no oil have to feather that engine and then turn around and come back rather than continue so it was a problem major problem and they did everything they could to keep them going but as i said before they had they lost half of the planes we had by the end of the one half incredible while the b-24 wasn't exactly fragile it certainly was not in the same league with the rugged tough machine that boeing produced all too often liberator missions turned into tragic tales of death and destruction at the hands of enemy fighters b-24 pilot bill foster recalls just such a mission occupied europe we lost an engine and there were fighters around but they weren't really attacking our squadron but i don't know what a straight bullet uh maybe just a hose flew off or what but we lost our oil pressure on one engine and so we feathered the engine and we just couldn't keep up we fell back and we were the last one with the photographer on board then we lost another engine caught on fire and that fighters were attacking that's when they really came in from all sides then they had this uh me1 tent a twin-engine fighter with the rockets i'd never seen a rocket or heard of one but uh we could see them going by us and they were the ones that really did all the damage they uh they hit our waist and killed two or three cells in the back they shot all our engines off or they quit and uh all of a sudden the my controls my rudder controls just went out i had no no control of that at all and uh same way with the ailerons so i yelled let's go we had to go up through the hatch and we're lucky our airplane had that top hatch because they all didn't it was only uh two foot square about and uh that's where we went up all of us the uh on the flight deck and just as i was standing there ready to go up i see pete my navigator coming up from the bombay and uh i got up on top and helped him up and they we were the last two out of the airplane my intention was to walk all the way back the airplane on top of that fuselage and jump off the tail but just as i started out the plane lurched and i fell down on the right wing and rolled off through the flames the whole trailing edge of the right wing was on fire and i rolled off through that and i must have passed out because i don't remember pulling the chute but i woke up and and i was being lifted up in the air uh by the chute opening and the airplane was not too far off and uh i saw it crash just well probably a city block from where we landed one fellow early in the mission when we were first attacked he had his foot blown off and we issued morphine to him or i had to give that to him and we thought that he had been when we counted the shoots we thought he had been blown out but we found out later that he was they they threw him out and he was alive uh when he went out but he landed in a tree and bled to death the tail gunner was killed in the turret the uh ball turret down below he was killed just getting out of his turret i don't know how he knew but the photographer told me that he took a took a rocket right in the midsection the worst one was the nose gunner who had he had his turret over to one side and it was uh shot out the controls were shut out the bombardier tried to wind him back in mechanically and he couldn't do it so he died screaming he was in the airplane when i left besides being less than durable the b-24 with its narrow wing tended to wallow above twenty thousand feet this made it a mediocre bombing platform and made tight defensive formations above that altitude impossible to fly the clothes are very mushy on a b-24 extremely mushy that means when you're flying in tight formation you're constantly moving throttles and the rudders and the ailerons all the time just continually moving them thinking it was hard work after we worked 15 minutes a piece the pilot two pilots and after 15 minutes you're ready for a rest our best fighter cover this isn't a fact but that's where we felt what b24s they kind of flew this way now it's tough for them to fly formation so if anyone if the fighters picked on anyone they'd go after them it wasn't as stable as the b-17 so the b-24 guys couldn't fly as tight formation as the b-17s and so the germans would see the looser formations flown by the b-24 groups and they would go in and wade into them launch their attacks at the the ones who looked like they were straggling a little bit so tight formations had to be maintained even until the end of the war otherwise you are a target to help offset the b-24's inability to fly tight formations consolidated equipped the j-model with a nose turret that supported a pair of 50 caliber machine guns while the additional firepower helped it cut the liberator's speed down to 278 miles per hour and reduced its radius of action to around a thousand miles the b-24j was also a foot longer than the d model measuring 76 feet from nose to tail thanks to the new nose turret its empty weight had jumped from 32 000 pounds to almost 40 000 pounds [Music] the b-24 also turned out to be hard to fly small pilots usually could not handle the liberator as the rudder controls were so heavy and taxing that they required a bigger man with strong lower back and leg muscles at times it took both the pilot and co-pilot working together to operate the rudders effectively flying formation it was real heavy on the rudders we all got what they called b-24 knees especially at altitude and i had a pretty severe case of that but it didn't last never loved like the b-17 the liberator would nonetheless provide yeoman service in the u.s army air force never flashy but always capable of getting the job done the b-24 equipped the entire third air division within the eighth air force by mid-1944 the 15th air force in europe flew b-24s almost exclusively in the south pacific the b-17 initially served as the mainstay of the heavy bomb groups by mid-1943 however the b-17s were giving way to the longer-legged b-24s [Music] eventually the liberator entirely replaced the flying fortress in the pacific by war's end the b-24 had been produced in greater numbers than any other american aircraft no fewer than 18 482 liberators rolled off of assembly lines throughout the united states including the famous river rouge plant in the midwest both the army air force and the navy use the b-24 in a variety of roles a fact which made it more versatile if not more respected than the b-17 liberators were employed as high and low altitude bombers knight intruders skip bombers transport aircraft and for long-range maritime patrol missions few aircraft in american history have been adapted for as many uses as the b-24 its very versatility made it one of the great designs of world war ii the b-24 first saw action for the army air forces with a secret unit called the halverson project number 63 nicknamed hal pro this small group of 23 liberators and 231 men left florida in may of 1942 with orders to bomb tokyo led by the loud and abrasive colonel harry hurry up halverson the detachment flew from florida down to brazil crossed the atlantic and then passed through the interior of equatorial africa turning north alpro's free-spirit pilots landed at khartoum sudan where the british halted them german raids were hitting other airfields along the chain of strips alpro planned to use to get to china where they had orders to operate from a series of primitive fighter bases in the chekyang province [Music] the original mission uh my understanding is was to go to cartoon then from cartoon they were going to go to chen kim china and then they were going to bomb tokyo or japan from chan king china but then chan kane was overrun by the japanese so that's what killed the helperson project but the original group was to to go by way of egypt over to chan chang china then from there bomb japan all of a sudden hal pro's entire purpose had been rendered moot they were orphaned in the middle of nowhere with no mission and no orders [Music] halverson's intrepid little band ended up joining the british desert air force in egypt from there his remaining b-24s began flying tactical support missions for the eighth army as it battled rommel around to brook we didn't have any command over there at all we didn't have an air force command like 9th or 8th or anything like that we were just a group and the british were having problems with rommel rommel was knocking at the doors of cairo and that's when the british asked for the b-24s support in bombing uh rommel's supply lines uh and his ships bringing supplies in so that's we took our orders we got targets and orders uh from the british or at least kane did and we were assigned missions on one mission halvorson's b-24s actually attacked an italian surface task force composed of cruisers and battleships malta was an ideal post out there that could pick up the convoys coming from from italy and germany would have to bypass off the off the coast of malta and when the information on convoys came through it was passed on to our bomber command or group and we were told what to look for and where to find him or anticipate finding them so we'd go out after the ships in the middle of the mediterranean it's it's not easy to hit a new maneuvering chip because by the time you drop your bomb and that ship goes and changes course to a different direction your bomb isn't going to hit but we did get ships we did damage them or [ __ ] them and then the british submarines in the area would finish them off if possible [Music] then in june of 1942 the usaaf commander hap arnold came up with a new and dangerous secret mission for hal probe instead of flying on to join the fight against the japanese or staying in egypt where they would continue to fight rommel arnold ordered colonel halverson to attack plosty originally hal pro's pilots were supposed to fly from egypt skirt turkish waters then turned north to fly up through the balkans to strike the oil fields then head back south as the navigators worked the course out they discovered that they probably wouldn't have enough fuel to get home instead the american officers who arrived to brief them told the crews to land in iraq that shortened the flight to about 2 600 miles but still the b-24s could not possibly fly that far with the 3600 pound bomb load they had been ordered to carry hurry up halverson was not the kind of guy who was going to risk the lives of his men to satisfy some political decision or political need on the part of the allies so just before this mission was flown he walked in to the briefing room saw his cruise and looked at him and said all right pointed at a map said this is the most direct route and he pointed across turkey we're going to use it and so oh and by the way flying at low altitude that's not going to happen at either so they went up to their normal bombing altitude they crossed turkey illegally they bombed ploesty and came back across turkey illegally but they did so and got back the ones that got back had actually enough fuel to get back there were some that got interned in turkey and some one that ended up in iraq but for the most part uh that decision probably saved many lives on that mission otherwise had they gone the route that they had been originally ordered to go and at the altitude they probably would have been shot down to the last plane or run out of gas on the wheel to the pilot's relief halverson knew that any other way into ploesti would guarantee a suicide mission on june 11 1942 the mission began alpro's raid on plesty was the first american raid on the european continent and it was the first raid on the critical oil fields that would later absorb so many american bombs 12 b-24s mated over romania where one bomb ships in a black sea harbor and the others hit the oil refineries around floeste then turn for home [Music] alpro's first pro-est mission never received much publicity and the low altitude strike a year later on august 1 1943 soon eclipsed the single in-prick raid halverson himself landed in hot water for taking his men over neutral turkey he then ended up destroying his career when he began arguing with his british superiors in egypt after that first pro-estimation halverson locked horns numerous times with the with his british superiors who complained to washington enough so that he eventually got recalled and that destroyed his military career he came home kind of an ignominy and ended up retiring from the service as a colonel and didn't see any further action in world war ii it's kind of a tragic end to a guy who was really loved by his uh by his airmen how pro had ceased to exist but in its short combat career had improved the value of the b-24 a year later hundreds of b-24s were operational from the north african desert to east anglia to the frozen aleutian islands through to the jungles of new guinea on every front where the army air force saw action during world war ii the b-24 served as a key player in heavy bomber forces in the pacific the long-range liberators were used by kenny's fifth air force as both low and level bombers one b-24 group the 380th flew out of darwin australia for much of the war where they struck repeatedly at the japanese occupation forces of the dutch east indies the 380th grew experienced at low altitude night anti-shipping missions as well as night intruder missions against ground targets later the b-24s from the 380th would strike at another key oil installation balikpapan sometimes called the plosty of the east the refineries around balikpapon supply japan with most of its oil and aviation gas initially the 380th bomb group went after balikpapon by itself in daylight and at night unescorted its b-24s suffered heavy losses in 1944 uh general kenny the commander of far east air forces in the southwest pacific felt that if his bombers if his heavy bombers could knock out balikpapon borneo and the oil fields and the refineries around that city that they could force the japanese to surrender balikpapan was seen sort of as a palestinian of the east as the big holy grail target for the the southwest pacific air forces and uh that was really wishful thinking the japanese weren't going to surrender because they didn't have an oil refinery in borneo with the arrival of the 13th air force and their b-24s he actually had enough bomb groups to actually make a sustained heavy series of strikes on black defend and he took advantage of that opportunity and he personally visited the bomb groups to to try to buck up morale and get those guys behind this operation in the early days of october the bombers flew the 1200 miles to the target and back alone in the process japanese interceptors knocked down many of the raiders kenny's b-24 groups couldn't withstand such losses short on cruise and with few replacements in sight he had to figure out a way to protect his b-24s or he wouldn't have enough bombers to cover the coming invasion of the philippines fortunately his fifth air force fighter groups found a way to get their p-47s and p-38s from morotai to bleak papon and back starting october 11 1944 the bombers went to the refineries covered by swarms of little friends the japanese rose to greet the attackers and were massacred by the p-38s and 47s [Music] malik coupon was hit hard though the refineries were not totally knocked out the baelique papan raids were the longest missions of the war in the pacific for the fighters that accompanied the b-24s some of the fighter pilots were airborne for over eight hours and landed with just a few drops of fuel remaining in their tanks the problem was the target was not really worthwhile the the japanese didn't have the shipping left to haul all the oil up to japan so whether or not their production facility there was destroyed was really immaterial the reality was they couldn't get the oil that was even being produced at that point uh to japan there just weren't the the tankers left because the american submarine campaign had just ravaged japan's sea lanes while kenny's b-24s were pounding beleiqvan over in england the liberators of the third air division eighth air force were being used to hit targets deep in germany [Music] early on operational experience showed that b-17s and 24s could not really operate together as they had very different cruise speeds as a result the 8th b-24s were separated into their own air division and were frequently used on faints and diversionary attacks this secondary role graded on the liberator crews who knew their aircraft could strike targets anywhere in europe [Music] finally the eighth began sending the third air division on more meaningful missions always covered by hundreds of escort fighters the b-24s were still more vulnerable than the b-17 and needed as much protection as possible [Music] eighth air force liberators spent 1944 and 45 hitting cities and factories deep in germany poland and austria at times only the 8th p-51 mustangs had the range to follow the b-24s to their distant targets and back across europe losses continued to be heavy german fighters were becoming less of a threat but large concentrations of flat guns began to take their toll [Music] the plane had been on our right as they went over the target [Music] they got a direct hit right in the waist and uh when the black exploded or whatever what had been flack exploded inside the plane and it just looked like a little ruffle luck like kind of bulged out you know all the way around the plane and uh at that mission i was flying the waste and hey he was he was just he was just right there you know uh where i could look right out there and see him and uh pretty soon the the where that expanded out it they br the plane broken too and uh the engines the engine just tilled it up and went straight into the ground and the tailpiece went up over the the the plane behind them and then ducked down and went down underneath the plane the next plane he just flipped lucky not for them for the guy behind the two planes behind him they were real fortunate not only did the air crews have to worry about flack and fighters but they also needed to be aware of more insidious less common ploys the germans used to try to bring down the allied bombers one time that there there was a beat 24 come in and tried to join up with us try to get into our formation you know they had that top tour just going round and round they're trying to persuade us that they could come in you know and join up with us but uh we wouldn't let them because we didn't know the because they had captured some of the the planes and and were flying on themselves and so the engineer then put off a flare and and they couldn't answer the code with the flares and so they backed off and that was the last i've seen of them that was quite prevalent you know they had warned us about this that don't let a plane in that unless you're absolutely sure and that was why the the flares were supposed to acknowledge you know that that was one of our group if a captured plane were able to get into a tight formation of b-24s it would have the potential to do substantial damage in italy the 15th air force by 1944 had been fighting a war of its own against the soft underbelly of the third reich the 15th b-24s routinely hit targets in northern italy austria eastern europe and of course plowesti in 1944 however with the arrival of the p-51d these mediterranean-based liberators were able to strike berlin from the south and have a protective fighter escort through the entire mission [Music] the berlin raids were fiercely contested affairs and the 15th b-24 crews were hit by everything the luftwaffe had left including the me-262 jet fighter again losses were heavy but the 15th kept up the pressure providing along with the eighth air force a constant one-two punch against the reich in the spring of 1945 the b-24 groups in europe took part in several highly unusual missions during the allied effort to cross the rhine the largest airborne assault of world war ii was made by american and british paratroop and glider units alone and isolated on the eastern side of the line these men quickly ran low on supplies a massive effort was made to get food ammunition and medicine to the brave paratroops but the number of transport planes proved insufficient for the task liberator units all over east anglia were then loaded with supplies and flown over the rhine area battlefields at under a thousand feet where they dropped their precious cargos to the desperate men below the liberators cavernous bombay turned out to be ideal for such missions but flying the huge b-24 at such low altitude in the face of light and medium anti-aircraft guns could be exceedingly dangerous the american paratroops and glider forces really took a beating from german enemy aircraft and when their resupply b-24s came in they got hit by the same aaa fire and many many b-24s were shot up going in that low they were a huge target they were badly shot up dropping supplies to the pair troops and they lost a dozen b-24s with many many more damaged uh on this mainly mission of mercy something that the b-24 had never been designed to do really and it was one that inspired some bitterness among some of the crews as the war dragged into its final weeks the liberator played one last role one in which it would be long remembered by suffering dutch civilians allied air planners received word in the spring of 1945 that holland was starving cut off from germany the nazi-held sections of the netherlands had run out of food and fuel the entire civilian population was in jeopardy of starving to death the eighth air force came to the rescue the b-17 and b-24 groups swarmed low over holland dropping canned food powdered milk and sea rations by the ton on the grateful population as the war ended the third air division's b-24s continued to fly these missions of mercy through their efforts thousands of dutch lives were saved for the man who flew these supply runs they were the most rewarding missions of the war the ones they remember with the most pride they converted all our bombers every bomber that took part in the raid was converted we put bomb bait we put wooden platforms in the bomb bays hinged them on one side on the on the bomb racks and fixed it so the bombardier could when he dropped toggled the bombs instead of bombs the doors came open these wooden doors and what we had stacked on the doors would fall out the dutch civilians had marked the fields where they wanted us to drop they put a white cross but i did hit the red cross the white cross one time you know it's kind of interesting because sometimes i can remember my commanding officer his airplane they were having trouble the doors open and but the boxes didn't fall out so they also furnished a long stick in the airplane so that the person in the actually was a flight engineer could take the stick and poke at things so i can remember watching the commanding officer's airplane going around and one box at a time falling out i could watch one i remember one hit hitting a cow there's a cow down there and the cow just turned over i i watched a couple go for the roofs of houses that was home delivery just went right through the roof but i tell you the uh the dutch civilians really appreciated what i do i mean i think that to them now it's it's like a holiday that they really celebrate the fact that we saved their lives with the end of the war the b-24 disappeared from american service with surprising speed liberators in europe were lined up by the hundreds in fields across england and germany where they were summarily scrapped the few that returned to the united states were quickly mothballed in aircraft boneyards in arizona and southern california by late 1946 hardly a b-24 remained in flying condition while the b-24 liberator outnumbered all other american heavy bombers of world war ii its key role in the air campaigns against germany and japan has been eclipsed by the more popular and beloved boeing b-17 flying fortress never a plane to generate much passion with its crews the b-24 nonetheless formed the backbone of the 15th 13th fifth and seventh air forces and flew on some of the most important missions of the war liberators dropped more bombs than any other american heavy bomber during the war doing so while taking heavy losses from flack and fighters though it never became a true legend in aviation history as did the b-17 and the b-29 the liberators served as the army air force's most versatile workhorse said one liberator pilot it was good enough to get the job done [Music] you

Channel: DroneScapes

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Keywords: b-24 bomber, b-24 liberator, consolidated b-24 liberator, consolidated b-24, b24 liberator, b-24j liberator, consolidated b-24 liberator vs b17, b24 liberators, b24 liberators documentary, b 24 liberator bomber, b24 liberator aircraft, commemorative air force, b24 liberators shot down, b 24 liberator crew, b 24 liberator crash, consolidated b-24 liberator (aircraft model), b24 bombing, b-24 bomber with sound, b-24 bomber vs b-17, b-24 bomber ww2, b-24 bomber plane, B-24, B24

Id: r7HNQs8hOBI

Length: 51min 50sec (3110 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 08 2022