B26 Aircraft - "It wasn't the airplane I wanted to fly. I was horrified because of all the bad stories I had heard about the B-26 Marauder. I’d heard all kinds of things – for example, I’d heard you couldn’t fly it on one engine so if an engine went out on takeoff you would crash.”
The reputation of the B-26 for crashing right and left was mostly a myth, but the aircraft could be demanding: Its 150 mile per hour speed on a short final approach was intimidating to pilots who were accustomed to slower speeds, and whenever they slowed
B26 Aircraft
down below what the approach speed the manual stated, the aircraft would stall and crash. Despite a superb war record, most Marauders were put out to pasture once the fighting ended. When the newly-independent Air Force changed some aircraft terms in June 1948, it took one step which has sown confusion ever since.
Marauder Man
With the last Marauder gone, the service re-assigned the B-26 appellation to a different plane, the Douglas A-26 Invader – which remained in service under the B-26 designation well into the 1960s. Both aircraft with the B-26 nomenclature enjoyed distinguished careers, but over the years the Marauder has become the less recognized of the two.
Martin built 5,288 of them. First used in the Pacific in 1942, they also fought in the Mediterranean Theater and in Northern Europe. Powerplant was two Pratt & Whitney R-2800s of 2,000 horsepower each – on an aircraft with a reputation as a crew killer, one of the most reliable reciprocating engines ever built.
"We had to fly with no heat because the heaters were built around the exhaust stacks and if those got hit you'd have carbon monoxide inside the plane. We were not pressurized. We did not have oxygen even though we sometimes flew at 12,000 or 13,000 feet.
They simply figured we didn't need it. “My first B-26 training base was Dodge City, Kan. I really was depressed going out to Dodge City. I got there and found the base closed for a week because of a blizzard.
They were running low on aviation fuel. So we climbed aboard a Marauder and flew to Amarillo, Texas to pick up some fuel and that was my orientation flight in the B-26. "The instructor showed me everything you'd heard the plane couldn't do: You couldn't stall it, you were doomed if you lost an engine (we landed on one engine with that load of gasoline).
That experience was like a religious conversion. "Starting engines we had a guy on the ground with a fire extinguisher staying on alert in case of fire. He would signal the pilot to start the prop.
You started with the left engine, the no. 1 engine. We started each combat mission knowing exactly when we were expected to taxi out? you had to be in the right place at the right time because we took off in 20-second intervals.
You got up and got into a formation and headed out. “The Widowmaker.” “The Flying Coffin.” "The Baltimore Whore." These were names foisted on the B-26, built by the Glenn L. Martin Company in the Baltimore suburb of Middle River and also in Omaha.
At a training base in Florida, the legend grew that the B-26 was so dangerous, crews were crashing "one a day in Tampa Bay." A B-26 Marauder with flak damage to the No. 1 engine nacelle, left wing and wheel well, Sept.
1943. Note the missing landing gear doors. This plane was assigned to the 37th Bomb Squadron, 17th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force. U.S. Air Force photo The B-26 first saw combat in the Southwest Pacific, where it was used in New Guinea from the spring of 1942. However, the Army Air Forces replaced the Marauder with B-25 Mitchells in that theater, and most B-26s served in
Europe and the Mediterranean. After a disastrous debut as a low-level bomber in Europe—an entire formation of 10 Marauders was lost to German flak and fighters in a May 1943 attack on targets in the Netherlands—the B-26 was relegated to relatively short-range, medium
-altitude operations with heavy fighter escort and served well in that role. Marauders also played a significant role in the Italian campaign and in bombing bridges and rail yards in preparation for the D-Day landings of the Normandy Invasion.
They were used in small numbers by Britain's Royal Air Force and by the Free French. The Douglas A-26/B-26 bomber was the only American bomber to fly missions in three wars. After World War II, it served as a first-line bomber during the Korean War and during the Vietnam War.
Douglas started the A-26 in 1941 to follow the A-20/DB-7 Havoc bomber. B-26, also called Marauder, U.S. medium bomber used during World War II. It was designed by the Glenn L. Martin Aviation Company in response to a January 1939 Army Air Forces requirement calling for a fast heavily-armed medium bomber;
the result was an exceptionally clean design with a high wing, a torpedo-shaped fuselage, conventional tail surfaces, and tricycle landing gear. The B-26 first flew in November 1940, and the aircraft entered production “off the drawing board,” there being no prototype as such, in February 1941.
"We could fly a combat mission at around 315 miles per hour, which made us a difficult target for an enemy fighter. One name for the B-26 that wasn't so derogatory was 'The Flying Torpedo,' based on its shape."
"I learned that in its early days the B-26 produced more than its share of problems, but the real reason for its poor reputation was inexperienced instructors. And, the B-26 may have gone to war prematurely.
It did well in the Pacific. It had a few defects: the Curtiss Electric propeller would run away. They never changed the propeller. They just worked out the details. As for the instructors, they beefed up and expanded the training program – which was never as bad as people thought – and it improved.
There's lots of proof out there (including the smoking guns in Flight Journal some years back), and it'd be nice after 70 years to have the USAF admit they screwed up, covered up, and flat out lied ever since.
What an enjoyable piece. The B-26 Maurader is my favorite WW II aircraft. My Uncle, William L. Cardwell, was a B-26 pilot. However, in the last leg of their ferry flight from the U.S. to England, his plane crashed in bad weather on a mountain in Wales.
"Real accident rates were far lower than the B-26's reputation suggested. In fact, the B-26 performed well in the hands of a capable crew and became the backbone of the Ninth Air Force's campaign, operating from bases on the ground on the European continent.
Douglas built 2,503 A-26/B-26 Invaders. During production, a number of modifications were progressively introduced so that by 1948, the A-26 was one of the few wartime aircraft types still in service with the post-war U.S. Air Force.
When the famous Martin B-26 Marauder retired and the Air Force deleted the designation "A" (for attack category), the Douglas Invader took on the B-26 designation. Some 5,000 B-26s were manufactured during the war. Although it was faster than the B-25 and carried a larger bomb load, the B-26 was less well liked by those who flew it.
It was dropped from service after the war. "We got aboard the B-26 by climbing up through the nose wheel well. The guys in back climbed into waist windows. You had to be acrobatic: they didn't have ladders for the waist openings.
You could move back and forth inside the aircraft. The crew consisted of pilot, co-pilot, bombardier and three gunners, one a radioman, one an engineer, one an armorer. Thanks to Mr. Cardwell for these thoughts. I would love to see that movie if it's made with real airplanes and not just electrons.
Having participated in negotiations for a Hollywood version of "Hell Hawks," unsuccessfully, I would urge you not to count on ever seeing it on the silver screen. If it isn't geared towards 14-year-olds with toilet jokes, an exploding building and a car chase, it isn't going to become a motion picture.
It sure would be a great one, though. Vining, born in 1925, "had an ambition to fly the biggest thing available" and was told that at 135 pounds he didn't weigh enough to pilot the B-17 Flying Fortress.
"You have to wonder what they were thinking, because it took ten times as much muscle to handle the B-26," he said. Invader versions included the A-26D and A-26E light bombers, GA-26C ground training aircraft and the KA-26A tanker.
Some A/B-26s were equipped for photo reconnaissance, and during the 1960s, some surplus B-26s were used to tow targets. The last U.S. military Invader was retired in 1972 and donated to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
“There were two transition bases: Dodge City and Del Rio (by then, MacDill Field in Tampa had transitioned to B-17 training). We practiced single-engine procedures while under the hood on an instrument flight? they didn't do that at Del Rio.
I've done a lot of research and believe, as do many, the Maurader has not had its due in the history books. I think someone should make a movie and call it "Flak Bait". It should, as did the movie "Memphis Belle," tell the story of the Maurader Men and the plane with the best "get you home in one-piece" record of any bomber in the war.
"The thing that's easy to overlook is that we were relatively comfortable in an aircraft where we had enough room to turn around, stretch, and loosen up our bodies once in a while. A full and robust crew was just what we needed in the challenging environment in Europe.
And, yes, the Marauder was a grand old lady in another way. She could sustain damage and bring you home. The one time mine didn’t, it was shot to pieces from one end to the other.”
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