In this 1943 Air Force Bulletin, Major Joe M. Kilgore, who served for many months as a pilot with the Ninth Bomber Command, tells us what he and his colleagues learned about the B-24 and gives some operational hints for B-24 units not yet in combat.
When we went across in June, 1942, the B-24 had never been in service against German fighters and anti-aircraft fire, so we were naturally a little worried. We had heard a lot about the B-17. It was an accepted combat ship which could take a hell of a pounding and come home, but there were substantial questions about the B-24 — what would the Davis airfoil do with a hole in the wing? What would that tail do if a severe stress were put on it? We didn't know. We had heard some opinions, but there was no actual experience to go on.
The night we took off for overseas, mine was the last ship left in the United States and I was pretty disgusted. My wing tank had sprung a leak as had the last five wing tanks installed. I thought the ship would never be fit for combat service. Finally, at about 2:30 a.m., T took off and blew my instrument fuse. I lost my instruments and was taking off with a load of 63,000 pounds. I was through with the ship, and if they had let me I would have quit. I thought there was no use taking the ship into combat if we had this kind of trouble in the United States where maintenance conditions were ideal.
We all were fooled substantially. As soon as we got our ships overseas and assigned to one picked crew, and got one pilot and one engineer working on each ship all along, our maintenance problems practically disappeared. We found we could nearly always get 80 percent of our ships into the air.
Before we got over there we were doubtful about how effective high altitude pinpoint bombing would be. This was the type of work assigned to us. Rommel had advanced to El Alamein. The British requested that enough heavy bombers be kept in the Mediterranean area to close the German supply lines. For three or four months we did some pretty heavy bombing up in Greece and down in Crete and in the open waters across to Libya. The British tell us that from 12 October, 1942, till the time Rommel was pushed entirely out of Egypt, eight out of every ten of his supply ships in the Mediterranean were sunk and every single tanker sunk, and that 75 percent of this was done by the high altitude precision bombing of our B-24s.
We bombed the enemy's ships on the open seas and in the harbors. Of course, there were times when we would send out 27 airplanes and couldn't hit anything; then we would have a lucky streak. For instance, one time nine airplanes went to Benghasi. The first hit a tanker. The pilot of the second, thinking it was no use to hit the tanker again, picked out a smaller ship and hit it. It was a munitions ship, fully loaded, and this single stroke reduced the effectiveness of Benghasi by 50 percent. It tore out half the docks and warehouses.
When we first got over there, certain people told us that if we kept up the daylight missions we wouldn't have any airplanes left in six weeks. After the first six weeks, we had not lost any planes.
We became well-convinced of the B-24's ability to take a substantial amount of fire and still fly. We found that it made a stable bombing platform and was therefore a good airplane for precision bombing.
We were very careful with the engines because we knew they were the last ones we would get for quite a while. We had as much as 500 combat hours on some engines, and when they were replaced they were still running well. We made it a point to run them at the lowest manifold pressure and RPM setting possible under the circumstances.
We learned from personal experience that when you need it the engines will take 65 or 75 inches for several minutes and not cause trouble. Unless you change plugs after doing this, the engines may overheat and cause warped valves. We had airplanes operating out of short fields where it was consistently necessary to use 55 inches on the takeoff.
Coming back from a mission we would cut down the RPM to 1800 and cut back the manifold pressure to 26 inches to keep the engines as cool as we could. On the way out to the target we maintained as low a cylinder head temperature as possible in order to give the engines minimum wear. In that way, the engines gave us an average of about 350 hours of combat operation. At first we had no covers to protect the engines. This was when we were operating in the desert and the airplanes had to be left sitting for four or five days at a time with sand flying against the engines.
For a long time we didn't encounter intense anti-aircraft fire or enemy fighter opposition. When we did run into it, we soon became convinced that the airplane could take plenty of punishment.
One time over Benghasi, one of the airplanes was hit on the left wing, just outside the outboard engine. I thought the wing would fall off, since the shot went right through the main structure of the wing. You could have dropped a barrel through the hole. The plane continued to fly in formation. A few seconds later, a direct hit ripped a big hole in the bomb bay, severed the aileron cable, and knocked out the hydraulic and electric systems and the oxygen system. The plane had severe damage to its airfoil, no hydraulic system, no electric system, its aileron cable was cut, and it was about 800 miles from the nearest base. We escorted it to the base — 800 miles away. The plane landed at about 150 mph without ailerons and without brakes. None of the crew was injured, and the plane was back in service in about three weeks.
Just a few days after that, one of the boys got out of formation because of oxygen mask failure. He elected to turn back and make a second bombing approach, which he probably shouldn't have done, and was intercepted by fighters. He was still away from the formation and his only chance was to dive into the clouds. At this time I was indicating about 250 at about 18,000 feet, nose down. My left wing man got his rudder cable shot off and had to dive for the clouds. The left wing man was passing me pretty rapidly at 300 indicated when this boy with all the trouble came out of the sky and passed both of us, hell-bent for the clouds. His air speed indicator was reading 400 and that of the navigator, 375.
This was something at about 20,000 feet. The pilot suddenly realized he hadn't dropped his bombs, so he thought he had better. That part of the pilot's emergency releasing mechanism which opens the bomb bay doors had been disconnected from the regular bomb release and attached to a special handle on the flight deck. The pilot's emergency bomb release was arranged to release the bombs only, with no safety installation to prevent the bombs from releasing if the doors were not open. The pilot forgot about this. He pulled the release, and the bombs crashed through the doors.
Six thousand pounds of bombs going through the doors and smashing around, tore the airplane up considerably. The right bomb bay door came off and went up through the right wing, tore the flap loose, and cut out the trailing edge of the wing in the shape of the corner of the door. The left rear door hit the tail stabilizer. I could see the rubble flying around and it looked like he had been hit by a shell. Remember, all this was happening at 400 mph. The pilot kept his nose right down and went into the turbulent cloud and leveled off sharply, which might easily have snapped the tail off.
The pilot brought the plane back 600 miles and landed it on a dirt field, stayed overnight, took off the next day without repairs, and flew back another 600 miles to our main base. In all the operations of our Group over there, not once did we have a structural failure in a B-24 Not once did a B-24 go down because of the inability of the pilot to fly it after the controls were severed or the wings partly shot up.
We had one ship land at Malta so badly shot up that when the maintenance crews took a look at it, they abandoned it and did not even strip it for spare parts. There wasn't any part of the fuselage worth taking. They counted 500 holes and then gave up. Some were from AA fire and others from fighter fire. The airfoil was perforated and looked like a sieve. The wings had tears in them so big that the wing tanks wouldn't seal.
The B-24 rarely catches on fire and when it does it is usually a fire you can put out.
We found out that when as many as nine ships flew in good formation, we were able to defend ourselves against just about any number of fighters that could jump us. When we were told this at first, we didn't believe it. About the only time the fighter planes attacked us in formation was when a plane straggled.
About straggling out of formation — the best remark I have heard is: "When you get out of formation you have the choice of two things: Either take out your .45 and blow your brains out, or sit there a few seconds and someone will do it for you."
Of course, it is not quite that bad, but formation flying is very important. If you don't fly formation, you do not have the fire cover of the other ships. Fighters don't hesitate to jump you when you are by yourself. However, it is possible to get away by good, skillful maneuvering. One of the boys had been out of formation for about 30 seconds when fighters swarmed all over him — Messerschmitt 109s and Focke Wulfe 190s. They fought him for about 40 minutes until they ran out of ammunition and gasoline. By steep diving and climbing turns into the attackers, the B-24 pilot got away.
The tail turret will hold up against substantial direct hits. I saw a tail turret hit from not more than 300 or 400 yards from behind by a 20 mm shell. The fighter thought the gunner was dead and came in for the kill. He dropped down and started working his way to close range. The tail gunner was only slightly dazed. He put the cross line of his sights right on the propeller hub of the fighter, and when the fighter got close he gave it a big squirt right in the middle of the engine. The fighter blew up. We took the tail turret glass off, and found the 20 mm shell had hit almost dead center The explosion had cracked the glass, but no fragments at all were on the inside of the turret. There were machine gun bullets along the armor plate but none had penetrated it.
The B-24 is a good instrument ship. About 80 percent of our flying time was instrument or formation flying or a combination of formation and instrument flying. It is a good indication of your flying ability when you can fly formation for five or six hours and do it well, and then go back on instruments and fly a good compass course for three or four hours. The ability to get your plane back sometimes depends on this. I know that during training in the U.S. it is pretty hard to sit under a hood and fly instruments when you could be just cruising around. It's hard to sit in a Link trainer for hours at a time and work out your procedure, but pilots will find that instrument flying and formation flying will be vitally important.
The information you have about the airplane will determine whether or not you can bring one back that is badly shot up. If we had to do it all over, during training we would spend more time than we did learning the airplane from one end to the other. Most of us found that we didn't know the airplane nearly as well as was necessary. Ordinarily you can get by the minor things such as engine trouble, but when you run into damage to systems from AA and fighter fire you must know a lot about the airplane to fly it home.
You can increase your chances of getting back a lot by being on the ball. You may as well make up your mind that the enemy has good airplanes, and I, for one, haven't noticed the quality of his pilots falling off. The Me109 and FW19O are plenty good. They are well made and have plenty of speed. They come down so fast that it is hard to get the gunners to lead them far enough. The gunners at first just cannot believe that you have to lead them so much.
Curiously enough, a crew develops an uncanny sort of faith in its pilot. Every crew maintains that its pilot is the best man who ever sat behind the wheel of an airplane, and they honestly think it. They will go on leave, have a few drinks and fight because somebody said their pilot bounced a landing a little too hard.
The crews depend on the pilot's judgment most of the time under fire. A pilot will find that when he gets excited on the interphone while under fire, his entire crew will get excited. The crew members know that the pilot is the only man on the ship in full contact with the crew and the other ships in the formation, and they expect the pilot to know what is going on. Therefore, if the pilot gets excited, the crew figures something must be wrong.
Emergency procedures are very important. No matter how well trained the crew is, the time will come when someone will forget something unless the crew is drilled over and over again. We used to have repeated drills for abandoning ship; both bail-out and crash landing procedures. (Official B-24 ditching procedure is outlined in TO 01-5 EA-l and 01-5 EC-l.)
We had some crash landings in the sea. We did not know what sort of a landing the B-24 would make, but in the first two the entire crew got out and was picked up by speed boats. The B-24 makes a good normal landing in water. We learned it will float from one to five minutes after being put down. From my personal experience I have found that when the sea is glassy and doesn't have any swells, it is best to make your landing into what little wind there is. A sea that looks glassy from a thousand feet may turn out to have swells when you get on it. When swells are pretty high, I have always found that it probably is better to land cross wind and down the length of the swell. I have found it best to land into the coming swell in the froth just short of the crest of it. You can see what would happen if you landed crosswise and ran into one.
The usual procedure is to have the crew lie on their backs, feet forward to absorb the shock, or have them lean against the armor plate or something else, with their backs against it with some sort of padding to guard against any spinal injury. The crew should be kept well informed on the particular duty of each individual. One should be trained to bring out the emergency radio, another the food, another the water, etc. After your training along these lines reaches the point when every man brings out what he should, then you should aim to halve the time it takes to abandon ship.
The B-24 performs well under icing and other bad weather conditions. After a North Atlantic hop, one of our B-24s landed with the wings loaded with ice equal in weight to ten times the pull of gravity. The B-24 will fly well with ice loading on the wings in the event your deicers temporarily go out You can't be certain you can hold one up under heavy ice, but you can be sure that the structure of the airplane will take any sort of turbulent air pressure you will run into short of something abnormally violent.
In general, the B-24 stands up well, is easy to maintain, and is a hell of a good airplane. Frequently, you get into a position where maintenance becomes a difficult problem, but you will find that when you get into combat and have one flying crew and one ground crew assigned to each plane, your maintenance problems will clear up. It is the opinion of our Engineering Officer and our old line chiefs to a man; that the most difficulty they had was in maintaining the airplanes during the TU (tuning up) program. As soon as they got in the theater their troubles cleared up immediately. By then, both the ground crews and flying crews were more experienced and better able to take care of the ships. Also, when you get up against the real thing, all the boys work harder.
The B-24 is capable, with proper maintenance, of being kept in the air a large percentage of the time. We found that they could be put back in the air very soon after getting into trouble.
One of our planes came into Malta one day. The pilot had had a little trouble. The right landing gear was shot out. The nose gear wouldn't lock. Number 3 engine was shot out, the thrust-bearing on the propeller having burned out and let the propeller drop back so that it was cutting away the cowling. There were nine holes in the wing tanks — some of them so big they wouldn't seal and gasoline was flowing along the fuselage.
The pilot came in for a blind landing at about 2:30 a.m. When the plane landed, the landing gear folded up and the plane went on its nose and skidded across the field. One propeller was ruined and a wing tip damaged. The fuselage was warped and the whole nose section was crushed. We went out to look at it, and just wrote it off the books. We thought it wouldn't get out of there for a couple of months. Four days later, it was flown into a field at Tobruk, then on back to a depot, where a new engine was installed. In three weeks it had been completely repaired and was back in combat.
Everyone who has come back to the U.S. from our outfit is a thorough believer in the B-24. It is a tough baby. It can take just about any sort of pounding and still fly. We found that even under combat loads we flew on two engines as long as we could feather the other two. Of course, if two engines are shot out we cannot feather them — that is, they windmill back on us — and we have a tough time keeping the plane in the air. However, even dragging two engines that are not feathered we can make about a hundred miles with good altitude to start with.
How lack of knowledge about the operation of their aircraft engines can get pilots into serious trouble is illustrated by several incidents that have occurred in heavy bombardment units in the South Pacific.
On a night mission out of Henderson Field, against Kahili airdrome, a B-24 pilot, thinking he had plenty of gasoline, made the entire flight on high power settings instead of conserving his gasoline by lowering his setting to cruising on the trip to and from the target.
The pilot started out from Henderson Field with 2,300 gallons of gasoline on a mission that normally takes 4.5 to 5.5 hours. As be neared Guadalcanal on the return trip, a Jap air raid was in progress against Henderson Field. This forced the pilot to cruise around over the ocean until the alert was over and the landing lights could be switched on for him. After the pilot cruised about 30 minutes, the navigator decided he was lost. An hour later, just as the navigator located the plane's position, the engines went out and the pilot had to make a forced landing in a cove on the Guadalcanal coast. Two men were lost in the ditching.
Investigation proved that the pilot didn't have enough knowledge of the rates of gasoline consumption at various power settings. This knowledge is necessary because the visual gauges are not always reliable. The pilot thought, at the time the engines stopped, that he had 400 to 600 gallons of gasoline left. In addition, he made the error of coming home from Kahili at a high power setting with no thought of conserving fuel just in case something might happen. When he ditched the airplane he was only 15 minutes from the field, and probably would have been able to get in O.K. if he had returned from Kahili at cruising power.
Thorough familiarity with every aspect of the power plant of his aircraft is the duty of every pilot. The lives of his crew depend upon it.
Joe M. Kilgore. October, 1943. How I Came To Love The B-24. AIR FORCE GENERAL INFORMATION, Bulletin No. 16. The Journal 2nd Air Division. Volume 43 Number 1, Spring 2004.
When we went across in June, 1942, the B-24 had never been in service against German fighters and anti-aircraft fire, so we were naturally a little worried. We had heard a lot about the B-17. It was an accepted combat ship which could take a hell of a pounding and come home, but there were substantial questions about the B-24 — what would the Davis airfoil do with a hole in the wing? What would that tail do if a severe stress were put on it? We didn't know. We had heard some opinions, but there was no actual experience to go on.
One time over Benghasi, one of the airplanes was hit on the left wing, just outside the outboard engine. I thought the wing would fall off, since the shot went right through the main structure of the wing. You could have dropped a barrel through the hole. The plane continued to fly in formation. A few seconds later, a direct hit ripped a big hole in the bomb bay, severed the aileron cable, and knocked out the hydraulic and electric systems and the oxygen system. The plane had severe damage to its airfoil, no hydraulic system, no electric system, its aileron cable was cut, and it was about 800 miles from the nearest base. We escorted it to the base — 800 miles away. The plane landed at about 150 mph without ailerons and without brakes. None of the crew was injured, and the plane was back in service in about three weeks.
The tail turret will hold up against substantial direct hits. I saw a tail turret hit from not more than 300 or 400 yards from behind by a 20 mm shell. The fighter thought the gunner was dead and came in for the kill. He dropped down and started working his way to close range. The tail gunner was only slightly dazed. He put the cross line of his sights right on the propeller hub of the fighter, and when the fighter got close he gave it a big squirt right in the middle of the engine. The fighter blew up. We took the tail turret glass off, and found the 20 mm shell had hit almost dead center The explosion had cracked the glass, but no fragments at all were on the inside of the turret. There were machine gun bullets along the armor plate but none had penetrated it.
How lack of knowledge about the operation of their aircraft engines can get pilots into serious trouble is illustrated by several incidents that have occurred in heavy bombardment units in the South Pacific.