B-24 Liberator
Although the B-24 Liberator shared the honours with the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress of being the principal American heavy bomber of World War II, it was a much later design, being orginally built to meet a U.S. Army Air Corps requirement outlined to Consolidated early in 1939. The requirement was, in fact, for a heavy bomber of better performance than the B-17 then in production, a range of 3,000 miles being specified, together with a speed of more than 300 m.p.h. and a ceiling of 35,000 ft. The B-24 represented one of the earliest products of President Roosevelt's intervention in behalf of air power in the autumn of 1938. Taking advantage of the new authority for heavy bomber development. General Arnold in January 1939 asked the Consolidated Aircraft Company to produce a four-engine bomber with a 3,000-mile range, a top speed above 300 miles per hour, and a ceiling of 35,000 feet. These specifications exceeded current B-17 characteristics, and it was hoped that a superior plane might be the result. On the basis of preliminary engineering data, the Air Corps contracted in March 1939 for a prototype to be produced by the end of that year. Drawing heavily upon experience with the B-15, Consolidated had the new plane ready for its first test-flight at San Diego in December. Already the Air Corps, losing no chance to speed its preparation for war, had contracted for seven YB-24s and thirty-six B-24As. The plane went into production in 1941. Like the B-17, the B-24 underwent many modifications. Production models actually reached the B-24M, and model N was under development at the close of the war. Quantity production came with model D, and on the battle fronts D, H, and J became the most familiar. The B-24D carried the turbo-supercharger. Additional armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, power-operated gun turrets, and improved flight equipment may be listed among the major changes. Ten .50-caliber machine guns replaced the original three .50-caliber and four .30-caliber guns. The maximum bomb load rose from 8,800 pounds to 12,800. The speed remained comparable to that of the B-17. The most distinctive feature of the B-24 was its twin-tail construction. As early as 1942 the AAF felt that a single-tail B-24 would provide greater stability, and Consolidated undertook to try the change. Test models flown in 1943 produced results that led in April 1944 to a decision that all future B-24's would have the single tail. Actually, the Navy got most of the newly designed Liberators, and on Army fields the familiar twin-tail remained the distinguishing feature of the B-24. Ungainly looking ship on the ground, it had a grace of its own in the air. The number of B-24's produced during the war years, which reached a higher figure than that for any other U.S. combat aircraft, testifies to the plane's continuing utility in a wide variety of roles, including those of tanker and transport as well as bomber. The AAC selected Douglas and Ford to join Consolidated in producing B-24’s. At a new large plant to be built in Willow Run, Michigan, Ford would produce a “knock-out” version of the B-24. The plant became a model for mass production as document by a 1946 Air Materiel Command Field Survey Report, “Willow Run’s mass-production of B-24 Liberators was without precedent. There was no pattern of large-scale production in the aircraft industry to follow, and Ford staked everything on his belief that mass-production techniques developed in many years of automobile manufacture could be applied equally well to an airplane, a washing machine—or anything.”
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