NACA Ditched B-24 - 1945

[JBoyle]

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?

[Holedigger]

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

[camshaw]

I watched this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6THyBqVC ... re=related,
and I'm wondering if this B-24 is still on the bottom of the ocean off Florida?

Jerry

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?

[DaveG]

There is a nice article about the ditching test embedded in an oral history in the NACA/NASA files. The original seems to have been deleted from the JSC list, so do a search with these words--"B-24 ditching shoring bomb bay doors". The second result I came up with is a PDF from Nasa Headquarters NACA Oral History Project. The pertinent information starts on page 17 of the file.

Scott

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.

[Devilbrad]

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

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