Barksdale AFB photos

[Steve Nelson]

I don't have my references handy (posting this from my girlfreind's machine) but I beleive there are at least two other complete Ford-built B-24s still extant: The B-24M in the American Air Museum at Duxford (formerly on outdoor display at Lackland AFB) and the B-24L in the collection of Canada's National Aviation Museum in Rockliffe, Ontario. There's also B-24L nose section on display in the Michigan Historical Center in Lansing, MI.

I've got a book with a picture of the Barksdale B-24 languishing outside somewhere as a gutted hulk, minus engine nacelles, some time in the 50s or 60s. It was apparently given to a technical school with only 45 hours on the airframe. It's amazing how many Liberators actually survived into the 1960s as mechanics training aids or ad-hock monuments. If they'd just managed to hang on for a few more years, when surviving WWII aircraft began to be recognized for their historical improtance...


SN

[Chicoartist]

I've got a book with a picture of the Barksdale B-24 languishing outside somewhere as a gutted hulk, minus engine nacelles, some time in the 50s or 60s. It was apparently given to a technical school with only 45 hours on the airframe . . .

That would be the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, OK. The fuselage and inner wing sections were "Skycraned" to Barksdale circa 1979. The outer wings and engines were trucked in beforehand. There never were center and aft engine nacelle panels on the plane.

Wade

[tulsaboy]

The B-24 did sit at Spartan for years, and us B-24 fans in Tulsa have lamented it leaving for years now. Like someone else said in this thread, if we'd only had our "warbird awakening" a little bit earlier, or if it'd just stayed a few years longer, maybe we'd have been able to restore it here in Tulsa. Oh well. Missed opportunities.

kevin