Amazing what this countries manufacturing base used to be able to do.

And we still could if we'd take the advantage of china away from the corporate exec's BONEus'es
The last word can be interpreted as BONE US or BONE the US They both apply

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.

yea i did

One B-24 off the line every hour. Amazing.

My Dad was in the US Army Air Force in WWII, and was on 2 B-24's from 41-43. The first one was named "Sandy" They took anti-aircraft fire in that one and managed to limp it back into friendly territory and crash landed it. Whole crew survived. The next one was the "Iron Ass". They got shot down in that one and had to bail out. One crew member got killed during the hit, and my Dad was injured pretty bad. They were prisoners of war for 2 years in Austria until the Russians over ran the Germans and got them out. I do remember him saying once that it was bad that the Germans holding them in POW camp treated them better than the Russians who got them out. Dad is the 2nd from the right in the front row of the pic. He was the flight engineer and top turret gunner of their crew. USAAF CMS Hal E. West Sr. R.I.P. Dad.

Thanks for sharing that story of your dad's service. That's a great picture also.

This thread got me looking into more info about the B-24, B-17, number of planes produced, number shot down, life expectancy for various crew members (number of missions), which locations in the plane had the highest injury / death stats... un-effing believable.

It worked out that a crew member in one of these bombers had about a 1 in 4 chance of getting through their required missions w/o being killed, injured, shot down, etc. They pretty much said it was a death sentence; if you came back in one piece, you were one lucky SOB.

It's just unimaginable what WWII required of people as far as hard work & personal sacrifice to for so many years on end; I don't see it in this country today... guess ya' gotta go to Ukraine to find it now.

My father was a flight engineer on a B-24, during WW2. His crew bombed factories and oil storage on the mainland of Japan. One day, they were grounded for an unknown reason. Two days later, the first atomic bomb was dropped. You know the rest of the story.

Well said but Americans have been known to rally when needed and hope we still could

and more airman were killed in the bombing campaign that ground troops.

My uncle flew 30 or so missions. I don't see how he did it.

Off topic, but I've been looking for a reason to share this

from Wiki:

Flying the B-24

Lindell Hendrix, later a test pilot for Republic Aviation, flew B-24s for the Eighth Air force.[20] Hendrix preferred the B-24 to the B-17. In Eighth Air force combat configuration, the aircraft carried 8000 lb (3600 kg) of bombs. It could manage an altitude of no more than 25,000 ft (7600m), three or four thousand feet less than a B-17, but it flew 10-15 mph (16-24kph) faster. Its lower altitude made it more vulnerable to flak. Hendrix figured that Germans understood it was easier to hit, and that it carried more bombs.

It was necessary when flying the B-24, to get "on step". This meant climbing to about 500 ft (150m) above cruise altitude, levelling off, achieving a cruise speed of 165-170 mph (265-275kph), then descending to assigned altitude. Failing to do this meant that the B-24 flew slightly nose high, and it used more fuel. The Davis wing made the B-24 sensitive to weight distribution. Hendrix claimed that a lightly loaded B-24 could out-turn a P-38 Lightning.

A heavily loaded B-24 was difficult to fly at speeds of less than 160 mph (260kph). The B-24's controls were heavy, especially if the control rigging was not properly tensioned. ( B-24s were prone to flip tail over nose during attempted ocean ditchings)

B-24s leaked fuel. Crews flew with the bomb bay doors slightly open to dissipate potentially explosive fumes. Hendrix did not permit smoking on his B-24, even though he was a smoker. Chain smoker "Tex" Thornton, then in command of the US Army Air Corps' Statistical Control, flew across the Atlantic in a B-24, and was not permitted to smoke.[21]

Thornton's Statistical Control group demonstrated that Eighth Air force B-24s were taking lower casualties than B-17s because they were being given shorter, safer missions. The B-17s actually delivered more bombs to the target than B-24s.