A Citizen Soldier in the Air - a B-24 Liberator pilot's story.

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A Citizen Soldier in the Air.

Meeting the Big Boys (B-17, B-24)

After advanced training, pilots were assigned to an operational airplane, and Charlie was sent to fly heavy bombers in Sebring, Florida. "That’s where I met the big boys. At first I was checked out in the B-17, which was a dream airplane, big but responsive and as easy to fly as the Texan. You could fly that thing with your little finger."

The instructors were good, "they just made us fly the airplane," Charlie recalls. "You’d have to pass a blindfold test, knowing where every little thing was located, but even so, we would always use checklists. Whether you were a one year or a twenty year pilot, you never trust procedures to memory when you can use a checklist."

The B-17 was easy to taxi, didn’t want to ground loop, and handled well in the air. "Even if they cut your engines, it would glide well. It had lot of wing and huge control surfaces". They did a lot of high altitude flying, including stalls and spins."

Intentional spins?!?

"Oh sure, they’d make you pull the nose way up and it would wobble and shimmy and it would want to drop a wing.

You’d hold it off as long as you could then do a two, two and a half turn spins, then recover just like in a PT-19."

B-17 transition took about four months (May-August 1942) and included a number of long cross-country flights and temporary base assignments. "After I had been checked out in the B-17, I assumed I’d be going to Europe, but then I got orders to report for B-24 training, and I was told I’d be going to the Pacific".

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B-24 Liberators on the production line - over 18,000 Liberators were built, but only a handful exist today.
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So at Alamogordo, New Mexico in August 1942, Charlie started training in the Consolidated B-24D Liberator, which had only recently entered service.

This transition was quicker than the AT-6 to B-17 (about two months). What was it like to fly? "Not as nice as the B-17. For example, the B-17 had an auto-pilot that really worked well. It would hold your heading and altitude real nice. The B-24 on auto-pilot was all over the place. You wouldn’t have to wrestle the yoke as much, but you’d constantly be adjusting the auto-pilot settings."

In Alamogordo, he was assigned "his" B-24D (serial number 41-23839), which he would eventually name "Cookie" (pilots at the time got to name one aircraft, though in combat, they didn’t always fly that plane).

Despite all this, Charlie recalls that the D-model B-24 was not a bad airplane to fly. "Later models got heavier and more sluggish, even with the upgraded 1200 HP Pratt and Whitney engines. They had four gun turrets, which created a LOT of drag. They also put in huge armor plates behind the pilot and co-pilot, though I’m not sure who they were supposed to protect you from, your radio operator and navigator?"

A lot of pilots refused to fly with this extra weight, since there was only Plexiglas in front and above them anyway. "Many guys got shot from the front, above, or below - I heard of one guy who got a Purple Heart for a burned ass - the bullet got spent in the seat cushion - that’s what you call a hot seat!"

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