Pretty impressive. Anyone else pick up on the fact that it was planned and built well before we officially entered WWII? We were already gearing up for major military action and hadn't even been "invited to the party" at that point. Somebody(s) saw the writing on the wall and decided to be proactive about it.

FWIW, one of my late father's first flight assignments after becoming a Navy pilot in the late '40s was coastal patrol / ASW (anti-submarine warfare) in the Navy PB4Y-2, which was one of the USN variants of the B-24.