Warbird Information Exchange

Question for the B-24 experts in the house ...

What's the deal with how the nose gear doors of B-24 Liberators operate? I have seen and have pictures of Libs on the ground where the gear doors have opened outward (Diamond Lil/Ol'927, for instance), but also pictures of Libs where the gear doors don't appear to be present (Strawberry Bitch, for instance). The contradiction seen in pictures and my my Mk.1 eyeballs span all the various marks throughout the operational service of the Liberator type, afaict, and I recently read that Lib nose gear doors actually opened inwards.

I'm perplexed. Thanks for any/all information on this.

The gear doors are operated by the nose gear itself by a direct linkage to the gear. There is no seperate actuator for the doors.
As the gear retracts into the fuselage, it drags the doors closed behind it.

_________________
If God had wanted man to fly behind a flat motor, Pratt Whitney would've built one.

So the doors open outwards, and in cases where there are no doors visible when on the ground (like with Strawberry Bitch) doors aren't installed?

(When I was at NMUSAF a few weeks back I was tempted to jump the barriers to take pictures up into SB's nose gear well. Decided I liked the fact that I don't have any sort of arrest record better ...)

Garth,

There are two styles of nose gear doors on the B-24, inward and outward opening. Like all things Liberator, it is a little confusing to figure out which manufacturer did the doors which way...... If memory serves, Consolidated originally designed the airplane with inward opening doors, then Ford came up with the outward retracting setup, then Consolidated adopted the same arrangement in later "J" production.

Here is Consolidated-built AM927 with her original short nose:


And with the RY-3 nose that was installed late in the War--it still has this nose door arrangement today:


Witchcraft is a late production Fort Worth-built airplane and also has the outward acting doors.

StrawberryBitch is a Consolidated San Diego "D" and has inward acting doors.

Regardless of whether the doors open inward or outward, they work in the same way as skymster02 stated--the doors are driven by the landing gear strut assembly.

If you aren't confused by all the redesigns and changes, just start studying the B-24 in detail. There were LOTS of changes during the production of all those Libs.

Scott

Cool, thanks!

Reason I'm asking is that I have a couple 1/72 Lib kits built up, and another 3 or 4 in the stash. I've been annoyed with the one finished as Strawberry for a while because I oversprayed the doors with sand/pink during airbrushing and no longer had the custom-mix gray I used for the undersides. Then I noticed that on display she doesn't have the doors visible, which led me to the assertion that Lib doors open inwards.

On a really positive note, it looks like the original for my other B-24, "Kentucky Belle" (44-40268), had the inward-opening doors as well. I'd managed to pop those doors off during some rework and then lose them.

Yep, you're in good shape. 44-40268 was a block 155 San Diego airplane with the inward retracting doors.

Scott

I doubt any two B-24s were identical. I remember seeing a list of changes one time of one block number to the next and it was staggering.

Ain't that the truth!

The nosewheel doors on the B-24D didn't just open inward, the sort of raised up and slid sideways out of the way. Here's a pic of the nosewheel well of the Strawberry Bitch..that's the noseswheel strut on the left, and one of the doors on the right. The pics were taken by a freind of mine many years ago (before the entire nose compartment was incorrectly blasted with "interior green") The rest can be found http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/b24dinteriorcloseupkh_1.htm

SN