B-24A number 40-2376 carried prominent U.S. flags painted over its British-style camouflage as neutrality identification markings in the era before the United States became a World War II combatant. (Photo from the National Archives)

The United States obligated more aluminum to the construction of B-24 Liberators than any other aircraft of World War II. Well over 18,000 B-24s and derivatives flew from five assembly lines. That’s a military aircraft construction tally we’re unlikely to see again.

With a crew of 10 — and that number cycling through the system from 1941-1945 — plus thousands more Americans building and maintaining B-24s, the Liberator touched more families in this country than any other aircraft of the war. Chances are, if your family has been in the U.S. four generations or so, you have an ancestor whose path crossed with the B-24 during World War II.

The XB-24 prototype of December 1939 set the tone for the series, with its elegant Davis high-lift wing contrasting with almost cartoonish rounded twin tails. The prototype also embraced a greenhouse nose of many curved and faceted Plexiglas panels surrounding a flat and optically-pure glass bombsight window.

The original Consolidated XB-24 showed the early short-body design that set the tone. For economy of design, and to meet Air Corps deadlines, Consolidated embraced the wing and tail of its experimental Model 31 flying boat in the design of this Model 32 that the world knows as the B-24. (Photo from the Author’s Collection)

That greenhouse may have been appropriate in prewar design rationale, but it soon proved woefully undergunned as fitted to early combat models of the Liberator once the shooting started.

Evolution of the B-24 between 1939 and 1945 included a distinct run of greenhouse bombers before power nose turrets were introduced to make the Liberator more menacing to enemy fighter pilots who developed a proclivity for head-on gunnery passes.

The XB-24 prototype lent its configuration to the similar Liberator Mk. I for the Royal Air Force and the sole YB-24, plus a small run of B-24A models for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Length was computed at 63 feet, 9 inches. This configuration had a short nose ahead of the cockpit — short enough to be unaesthetic.

The Royal Air Force took short-bodied Liberator I versions to war. This example was photographed landing at the Consolidated plant at Lindbergh Field in June 1941. (Photo by Peter M. Bowers)

The Liberator visage took a turn for the better with the introduction of the Royal Air Force’s Liberator II model, which first flew from Consolidated Aircraft’s San Diego plant in 1941.

The Royal Air Force’s unique Liberator II was made to host a British Boulton-Paul top turret near the wing’s trailing edge and another Boulton-Paul design in the tail. The resulting airframe also stretched the nose of the Liberator by nearly three feet, setting the aesthetics for all the Liberators that followed. Consolidated Aircraft identified the Liberator II as the company’s LB-30. (Consolidated Aircraft Photo via the San Diego Air and Space Museum)

The British developed power bomber gun turrets to their liking, and intended to mount a tail turret on their Liberator II bombers. Popular logic says the tail turret added weight aft of the fulcrum of the wing that needed to be countered by an extended nose, so the Liberator II stretched ahead of the cockpit by almost three feet. The stretch also gave the bombardier and navigator more working room, and the new length of 66 feet, 4 inches, set the tone for the rest of the greenhouse Liberators that followed.

The last B-24A served the Army Air Forces in utility roles long after the Liberator design evolved into a longer, more combative bomber. (Photo from the John Campbell collection)

The Liberator had grown into its more aesthetic self with the Liberator II, and the next pre-production version for the U.S. Army Air Forces, nine B-24Cs, kept the longer nose while adding an American tail turret of Consolidated’s in-house design.

The handful of C-models proved the design, and Consolidated shifted into high production of the follow-on B-24D, nearly indistinguishable from the B-24C. B-24Ds served American and British forces around the world from late 1942 well into the war.

The Army Air Forces bought nine B-24C-models that codified the combat B-24s to follow, with the stretched nose pioneered by the Liberator II. The C-models were available for tests in the service’s extensive and urgent wartime development operations at places like Eglin Field, Florida. (Army Air Forces Photo via Allan Blue collection/The Liberator Club)

The Army Air Forces knew it wanted B-24s and lots of them, so additional Liberator assembly lines were started by Consolidated in Fort Worth, as well as Ford Motor Co. in Willow Run, Michigan, Douglas in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and North American in Dallas, Texas.

Auto maker Ford’s foray into the mass production of complex heavy bombers ultimately proved highly successful, but the learning curve was steep for a company more familiar with steel car fenders than aluminum fuselage skins. Ford’s version of the B-24D was distinguished as the B-24E, and the Army Air Forces allowed Ford to produce essentially obsolescent E-models used for stateside training while the automobile manufacturer, coached by Consolidated engineers, honed its aviation mass-production chops in Willow Run.

Ford Motor Co. began a long and productive association with the Liberator bomber when it turned out B-24Es, essentially the same as B-24Ds, before building large numbers of nose-turreted B-24H, J, and M models. (Photo from the Air Force Historical Research Agency)

The concept of five assembly lines for production of B-24s envisioned that Ford and, to a lesser extent, Consolidated in San Diego, would create Knock Down (KD) kits of Liberators, in addition to finishing whole bombers. The KD kits were shipped overland in special trailers to the Douglas plant in Tulsa and Consolidated’s Fort Worth facility where they were assembled as completed bombers.

The B-24D originated at the Consolidated home plant in San Diego. Kits were assembled by Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Consolidated’s second assembly line in Fort Worth. The B-24D and its derivatives were the first of the Liberators to emerge from multiple assembly lines. This example, nicknamed The Squaw, returned to the U.S. following hard combat in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. (Convair Photo via the San Diego Air and Space Museum)

Later in the war, the Fort Worth factory made its own B-24s from scratch. And just across town from Fort Worth, North American Aviation’s operation in Dallas crafted its own run of B-24 Liberators, starting with an insignificant number of greenhouse-nosed B-24Gs, similar to the classic B-24D.

Nobody ever complained about the working room and the visibility in the greenhouse nose B-24s, but necessary defense of the bomber led to multiple ideas on how to install a power nose turret in the Liberator, and the outcome was sweet for the gunner and stifling for the bombardier… a story for another day.

General Aviation News

Message History

Delivery option(s)