Warbird Information Exchange

Let's hear it for the pilots...
Ditching an airplane..even with crash boats on scene...is not for the faint hearted.

Wonder if they had an emergency oxygen supply in case they became trapped?

_________________
Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

No serial yet, but hit a source of more info on the testing. They were testing to figure out just what broke on the 24 that made it so much worse than ditching a 17. The running stats were of 62% of the Liberators breaking up on ditching opposed to 22% on the Forts. Crew losses mirrored those numbers with 24% of the Lib's crewmen drowning as opposed to 6% on the Forts.

Here is a link to the book overview of "B-24 Liberator, Rugged but Right", this data mined from page 29-31 where it talks about ditching and measures to help survivability in ditching.

http://books.google.com/books?id=D6ggoC ... er&f=false

_________________

Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

I was thinking the same about the florida ditching, would be fun to go find it,even though it would be a crusted up mess....wonder if its still standing?

here's the link to the Oral History Scott mentions:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cac ... -30-05.pdf

I started there on page 17 as Scott suggests...it's really quite a story, including the pilot dead-sticking a Liberator at Pax River and how the guy getting interviewed got bumped from the test flight by the military commander of Langley Field, a Colonel Greene, who wanted to get an air medal for the test.

The story of Major Harvey, the pilot, is really something too. Surprising end to that guy...


here's the link to the pdf of the NACA test report, ACCELERATIONS AND BOTTOM PRESSURES MEASURED ON A
B-24D AIRPLANE IN A DITCHING TEST By Margaret F. Steiner: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 092642.pdf

I couldn't find any mention of the serial number for the a/c.

_________________
Donate to support WIX here:

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/donate.html

According to this article it was repainted bright yellow and was originally named Ellie Mae. They tested 3 of them. Very cool stuff. http://gis.larc.nasa.gov/documents/720/historic/documents/1944-09%20Bomber%20Ditched%20in%20River%20as%20Part%20of%20Laboratory%20Test.pdf