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XB-41 Escort Bomber

In 1942, the US Army Air Force did not have fighters capable of accompanying heavy bombers to the full range of their action. As Americans bombed targets in the daytime, they experience heavy losses from enemy fighter aircraft. Therefore, the American generals came to the idea of the escort bombers. The escort aircraft did not carry bombs, but instead were equipped with additional defensive weapons and armor. They had to fly along the edge of the bmber formation and drive the enemy fighters away with a wall of fire.

The XB-41 and XB-40 projects were developed to test the escort bomber concept. Because there were no fighters capable of escorting bomber formations on deep strike missions early in World War II, the Air Corps authorized tests for heavily armed bombers to act as escorts and protect the bomb-carrying aircraft from enemy fighters. Both the XB-40 and XB-41 projects were failures for a variety of reasons -- they were unable to effectively defend other aircraft, the were too slow to keep up with formations returning from bombing missions, they were too heavy, and the basic flight characteristics were changed drastically by the added drag and center of gravity changes introduced with the additional turrets.

The Americans revived the idea of a "cruiser", which was actively developed in the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930. The heavy-bomber brigades of the RKKA Air Force then included "cruiser squadrons", complete with R-6 aircraft (later Kr-6). They were to guard the TB-3 formations in the long-distance raids. Designed as "cruisers", these included thehuge four-engine TK-4, armed with guns, machine guns and rockets. The last Soviet "cruiser" was TsKB-54, it was also DB-3SS. This aircraft based on the DB-3 bomber was produced in only two copies.

In the early 1940s a similar machine was created in Japan by the designers of the Mitsubishi concern. It was even released in a small series. But the Americans first built a "cruiser" based on heavy bombers. Boeing and Consolidated worked in parallel on projects XB-40 (based on B-17F) and XB-41 (based on B-24D).

The only experimental XB-41 was converted from a serial production bomber in Fort Worth. January 29, 1943 it was sent to the Eglin Airfield in Florida. Armament was increased from 10 machine guns to 14. The XB-41 was modified from an early production model B-24D (S/N 41-11822) and included 14 .50-cal. machine guns mounted in pairs in a Bendix chin turret, two Martin type A-3 power turrets on the dorsal (top) fuselage, a belly turret, left and right waist positions, and a tail turret. The first dorsal turret was redesigned so that it could rise, increasing the sector of fire, or drawn into the fuselage, reducing the drag in the cruise position. In the onboard installations, now mechanized, were mounted twin machine guns. A Bendix remotely-controlled turret was added in a chin position underneath the nose, and the nose glazing was modified to give the operator of the Bendix turret a clear field of view. During the tests, the left installation was covered with a transparent blister, but it distorted the view, and the blister was removed. The aircraft carried a total of 12,420 cartridges, including 4,000 in spare boxes in the front bomb bay. The armored protection of the crew was significantly strengthened. The additional weight of armor, machine guns and ammunition lifted take-off weight up to 63,000 pounds, 6,000 pounds heavier than a standard B-24D.

Tests at Eglin were conducted in winter 1942 and spring 1943. On March 16, the Air Force command approved an alteration, but a week later, on March 21, an order was issued to close the work. On March 21, 1943, the Army declared the XB-41 as being operationally unsuitable, and plans for thirteen YB-41 Liberator conversions were cancelled.

Boeing had already managed to get a small series of YB-40 to the advanced airfields in England. And this revealed the main shortcoming of the "cruisers": while the bombers were flying with bombs, the "cruisers" could still keep up with them in one formation, but after dropping bombs by bombers, "cruisers", whose weight did not change, began to lag, becoming easy prey for enemy interceptors. The same was true of their Soviet and Japanese predecessors. The experimental XB-41 was renamed into TB-24D and used as a simulator for training mechanics.