@@SoloRenegade that and he speaks with the same monotous voice. He tries infelction but its like an old professor in school, although he sounds young enough
I met a man who was a pilot during World War II, who flew both the B-26 and the B-25. He began flying in the B-26, and after they were withdrawn from service flew B-25s for a short time as they were being phased out. He preferred the B-26 as being the higher performer of the two, but admitted the B-25 was much more forgiving, and easier to fly.
I can corroborate your comments. I talked to a really great pilot and long-time Boeing Employees Flying Association instructor, Cliff Smith, and he echoes your words. The B-26 had more teething issues at the beginning of the war. They weighted it down quite a bit with armament. But when they came out with the R2800, the B-26 was much better. The B-25 was much more docile to handle as it could fly at a slower speed, which is helpful when you're in a landing or slow flight configuration.
I find it interesting on how all aspects and operations of the US military during WWII were thoroughly documented and studied. And also all of the documentation and review was done the old school way with manually operated typewriters, slide rulers and slide calculators, manual calculations, etc.
Most nations did analysis, but the USA seems to have assigned (or had more to assign) more resources to it and done a more complete job. Some analysis has turned out to be over optimistic or inaccurate, but it looks to have broadly stood the test of time. What is particularly evident is that USA statistics are FAR better presented than other Allied nations. The aircraft manuals are generally better too.
@jimmiller5600 I'm British, but in terms of breadth and quality of presentation, the USA had the edge. There are a few places I might suggest that British research was more accurate, and the use of sampling theory to determine production numbers via serial numbers was impressive.
Trivia: The B-26's epithet "Flying Prostitute" was a comment on its original small wings. The B-26 was a huge aircraft, it wasn't that much smaller than a B-17, in fact the fuselage had a lot more girth. Yet it had relatively small wings. So the joke goes that "ladies of the night" have no job during the daytime, when everyone else works, yet they can always pay their bills on time.... that is, they have no visible means of support.... like the B-26 and its tiny wings.
If I ever wondered what the 'army' of non-combat staff boys that ran around behind the scenes clutching stacks of paper were doing... The reports you reference are incredible. You do a fine job of parsing through the mountains of data to glean the key points. I also appreciate you showing pictures of the various authors. Very interesting to a buff like me to read the actual words of Doolittle, Kenney, et al . Well done, and keep on keeping on!
Over the decades I have had some conversations with folks who served with my own Dad on B-26s and I think they all liked it. Back in the 70s through the 90s there was a group called the Marauder Society they all belonged to that was trying to repair a B-26 air frame and get it flying again. Eventually they did, unfortunately, on it's first flight, the pilot, a prior WW2 B-26 pilot, after radioing the ground that it was great, handled like it was new and he felt like a kid again, had a sudden fatal heart attack and died when the plane nose dived and crashed. And that was that. :(
I was surprised that there was no reference made to the use of the modified B-25 strafer a/c in the Pacific. The 345th Bomb Group (Air Apaches) created havoc with low level strafing against ground and naval targets from 1943 -45. The group history book details the use of "skip" bombing as an exponentially more accurate technique against naval vessels than traditional medium altitude level bombing while field modifications of the addition of up to a dozen forward firing .50 caliber machine guns was also effective against airfields, smaller ships and assorted ground targets. I am not aware that B-26 were employed in a similar manner in either the European or Pacific areas.
@@vvvci Excellent summary of what I was trying to say. I can recommend the 345th BG history "Warpath in the Pacific" for detailed history down to individual aircraft disposition/career.
There was a strategic bombing bias in the upper echelons of the USAAF and RAF that saw it as the "be all to end all". Anything that took resources away from that was looked down upon. This included using bombers for strafing or anti ship missions. There was a shortage of long range aircraft dedicated to U-boat hunting during the Battle of the Atlantic because the higher ups in the USAAC/F and RAF fought against taking aircraft away from strategic bombing. The theory being that strategic bombing would eliminate the sub bases and submarine manufacturing capability solving the problem that way.
When I was a wee lad, I thought the B-25 looked positively ancient and fuddy duddy compared to the sleek modern B-26. It wasn't until much later that I learned some specs and realized he B-25 was a better plane. But n my defense, I probably was confused by the later A-26 which was renamed to B-26 and was a whole lot better than the B-25.
@@buff123 even more so when you realise it developed from an A-series design. But the B-26 was intended to be very different but it didn't get the hoped-for engine, getting only about 2/3 of what it was designed to have.
Dad was a waist gunner in a B-26, he never said anything bad about it. The B-26 did bring him home. He was late war, '44-'45. He did mention the flak and he carried German steel in his body.
My own father was a unit photographer (320th) who also manned the waist gun when not clicking a camera shutter. Sometimes he also pinch hit as a radio operator. Like yours my father spoke very little about his experiences beyond telling us it was the raid on Casino that turned his hair white. It's kind of a shame really because I found the unit diary and all of the After Action Reports (which often named him) and know a lot more now and have a zillion questions to ask him, but he is 20 years gone so I can't.
@@kenibnanak5554 I know how you feel. My father flew with the 394th out of England and then France. He's been dead 23 years and I have so many questions I would ask him now. One of the problems was that he, like so many others, just didn't talk about his experiences until a few years before he died, and then it was mostly humorous things of a non-combat nature, which I was fortunate to hear.
Seems like the USAF knew that the B-26 and B-25 were not efficient or effective for the role they were expected to fill, but, they were also of the opinion that they had to keep medium bombers in the field because there was no alternative. Very interesting video.
In Europe the medium bombers took care of the ~250-300mile radius and allowed the Heavies to range farther into Germany. Mediums did a great job isolating the invasion beaches from supplies inland and turning Utah Beach into a Moonscape with about 3 Germans left to defend it.
I was at home in the UK during the 50th anniversary of D-Day when I heard several aircraft engines and when I looked up there were three B-26 Marauders flying passed. A big but welcome surprise.
From my understanding, since the B26 was mass produced straight off the drawing board without even prototypes being built there was always going to be serious issues. This was the initial root of the problem with its high loss and accident rates. And as the data provided, much off it was gathered prior to the work that went into sorting the B26 out. The other cause of combat losses was low level operations which took a heavy toll, understandably. The main structural change being an increased wing span that helped things considerably. If I’m not mistaken, certainly after those changes the loss rate improved and it became a much safer aircraft. As for the bombing accuracy, I can’t recall how that improved as the aircraft should have been more a more stable platform, for a 2 engined medium bomber. Also, bombing from a higher altitude, between 8000 ft and 12000 ft also reduced losses. Both aircraft were good but I do remember reading pilots recalling the B26 as a hot rod especially when it was lightened without bombs etc. Never heard anything like that about the Mitchell.
In his autobiography, (I Could Never be so Lucky Again,) Doolittle describes how, as commander of the 12th Air Force in North Africa, he would visit the B-26 units and give demonstration flights. While in flight, he would shut down one engine, then fly the plane. Then restart that engine and shut down the other. This to inform the pilots that with proper training and confidence they could safely fly the B-26.
Twin engine planes are notorious for 'torque rolling' into the ground on final approach with one engine out. The smaller wing area of the early B-26 made it particularly vulnerable. Add pilots with not so much experience and...
Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles did a post "B-26 Unsafe at any Speed" covered the problem with losing an engine on takeoff or landing. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle (greatest aviator in history IMHO) doing a demonstration for new pilots would be like Michael Jordan showing middle school kids how easy it is to dunk a basketball!
My father was there for at least one of those meets. Not well known I guess is that General Doolittle didn't come alone. He brought some expert, and very good looking, USAAF Woman's Auxiliary Flying Service (WAFS) pilots with him to assist in holding the men's attention. I have a photo Dad took of General Doolittle joking around with the 320th Group Commander.
@@peashooterc9475 The smaller wing area has nothing to do with it. If the speed is kept above Vmc the airplane will fly straight. The smaller wing area simply requires a higher approach speed, which actually increases rudder authority. A twin at light weigh can have its final approach speed limited by Vmca rather than Vstall. The Mosquito had a lower wing loading than the B-26, yet it also suffered insufficient directional control if it lost an engine at the wrong time during takeoff or landing. It also had a high Vmc due to a small rudder. But the Mosquito narrative is so positive that nobody cares to cast aspersions on its handling characteristics.
One a day in Tampa Bay. The B26 had Curtiss electric props. The crew chiefs would test cycle the props off the batteries. Later the plane was started by a start cart. During flight when the props were synchronized, the depleted batteries went flat, so did the props and splash. The whole nation was going up the learning curve. Many planes were lost due to screw ups, like using the wrong grade of gas, or maintenance errors, and green crews. The B26 loaded take off speed was ~150mph and cruise around 200. Not a lot of margin.
Found this video fascinating. My grandfather was a military flyer from 1935 to 1958.. he was flying B4 keystones and B10’s prior to the war. He has photos of b25’s in 1940 when they came out. Has a photo from 1940 or early 41 of a B26 that experienced a nose gear collapse on takeoff and the propeller cut into the fuselage cutting off the co-pilots leg. Guy bled to death. Spent time on B17’s, later B29’s. At wars end he was involved in testing aircraft for combat performance. He specifically was doing endurance testing of b25’s, A-26’s and B32’s. Talked about taking b32’s right from the factor to the boneyard at wars end. Post war he was using b17’s for VIP transport. As well as B25’s and A26’s. Early Air Force years used a lot of leftover ww2 inventory for currency training.
US Army and Navy pilot and crew losses from training and routine flights were almost as bad, sometimes far worse than combat loses! Famous WW I "ace" Pilot Eddy Rickenbacker was lost at sea with the rest of the crew of when their transport aircraft went down from mechanical failure, until they were miraculously found and rescued in life rafts two weeks later. Many B-29 crews went down from mechanical failures in long flights over open ocean to Japan - many were never seen again. During fighting in New Guinea, a C-47 transport loaded with pilots who had survived the brutal fighting long enough to go on leave to Australia had an engine fire in their transport, it went down with loss of all aboard. New Guinea had tall mountains which devoured many aircrews in bad weather (foul weather got many aircrews over socked-in England and Europe, and in America training flights as well), and Navy pilots and crew risked death with every carrier takeoff and landing, there's video of a Corsair pilot taking off too steeply, the plane stalled, winged-over to the left, and plummeted in to the ocean as the deck crew could do nothing but watch - the plane sank immediately, the pilot was gone in an instant. And of course carrier deck landings were even more hazardous, especially in bad weather or trying to land in a shot-up aircraft
Gotta love the nicknames for the B-26: "One a day into Tampa Bay" and "The Baltimore Whore" (With the relatively small wings, it had no visible means of support, and Martin was based in... Baltimore.) Mumble years ago, there was a guy in one of the old Usenet newsgroups who had been a B-26 Bombardier in the ETO until he transitioned to the A-26 right at the end of the war. He had some amazing stories.
@@CecilHabermacher the A-26 had a difficult start as the lateral visibility was poor which made flying in formation less safe than it should have been. Fantastic performance, though.
Would be great to see a similar comparison in '44 & '45, once they actually figured out how to maintain and utilize the B-26 and lowered its sortie loss ratio to be the best in the USAAF.
This is what I had always understood as well, that ultimately the B26 was the most survivable aircraft in the US inventory. “Flak Bait” in the NASM with 206 missions to its credit would also seem to bear this out.
@dgott7726 it's tricky, as you have to look at equivalent missions as much as possible (something brought up in B-17 to B-24 comparisons). The B-25 flew a lot of ground and sea attack missions in the PTO which had a high loss rate. Equally, the B-26 did a fair few low level missions in the ETO, notably on D-Day. Although the B-26 had the lowest final loss rate of any bomber in WW2, selecting a number of missions for each that match is the better metric. This having been said, the USAAF would also factor in bombs on target - so a 50% higher loss rate per sortie might be acceptable if effects on target were double, for example. Or even twice the loss rate might be accepted as in war time is factor, so being able to take out a target in one raid rather than two a couple of days apart might be worth it.
Two words: Flak Bait. A B-26B Marauder with 202 combat missions and 750 hours in the ETO with zero crew losses. Came back twice on 1 engine and more than 1000 bullet strikes. I'd bet if you did a detailed analysis of Marauder vs. Mitchell missions, the Marauders were assigned the more difficult missions. Flying a heavy bomber at medium altitude in the ETO was a death sentence.
According to my father-in-law, his squadron of B-26s flew a great many low level missions in the ETO after Normandy. Attacking bridges and rail lines to interdict supplies and prevent vehicles from making it to the front. He loved the B-26, but said the low level flying was terrifying.
In the early North Africa days the USAAF didn't really have the hang of things (being polite) and from reading the unit diaries and AARs of the 320th BG the first few missions were at absurdly low altitudes and losses were fairly high. In the desert you could see the planes coming head on at you at 300 - 400 foot altitude for many miles and have much time to prepare. There was also some fairly significant issues with the bomb bay doors and possibly how the bombs were stacked in the planes. I see multiple early AARs speaking of bombs not dropping while some brave soul jumped up and down on the stuck ones, at least one AAR specifically reporting the instant the neighboring plane opened it's bomb bay doors all it's bombs exploded, others speaking of bombs just dangling half in and half out of the plane while the pilot tried to shake the plane to free them, etc. Sudden changes in altitude and direction or speed to throw off enemy gunnery and make them harder to hit was a tactic that took a few mission disasters to work out. By the time British Sword Fish took over the anti-submarine duty the mission survival rate was much higher, which implies both better tactics and a decent resolution to the bomb bay doors and bomb rack issues.
@@GordonKley-nz4qm I suppose you missed the " Marauder vs. Mitchell missions" part. He opined that the Marauders were assigned the more difficult missions. I was providing some anecdotal evidence to support that. What value are you adding to the comments?
One VERY important fact you overlooked. The USAAF never operated B-25s in the Northern ETO, only MTO and Pacific. Flying missions over the heart of Festung Europa was more dangerous than over and around the Mediterranean area including Italy and Southern France, Basically, North of the Alps was B-26.
This was personally interesting as my father served on multiple B-26s from 42 through the end of 44 as an aerial photographer/gunner. Unit photographers were considered Staff personnel (as opposed to being considered designated air combat personnel) and accordingly for a long time they did not get combat pay, nor was the number of combat missions they were assigned to fly on counted or used as the basis for rotation back to stateside. It made them happy when they were finally designated combat personnel, but it kind of sucked that their next mission after that decision was received was given number# 1 as most of them already had enough or almost enough combat flights under their belts to qualify for immediate rotation back to the states. But mission 1 the next mission was. I very much wish much that I have read or heard about the planes since his passing had been available to me as discussion topics before he passed in the 1990s and well before the coming of the Internet. We had some conversations about the different plane types and his experiences, but not knowing much in those days I didn't know what to ask about. I had often wondered why the B-25 seemed to be preferred by the USAAF but now I understand the 'Bean counter' point of view. I had not previously known of the price disparity between the two aircraft. Certainly a 40+% cost difference coupled with diminished performance encourages phasing out the more expensive less efficient bomber. Also related, only long after he passed did I find the After Action reports of missions he had participated in online along with the unit diary and mention of him in some early Operation Torch documents. The price he paid for taking French in an NYC high school was an eenie meenie miney moe selection by the USAAF to be part of an advance team. I remember he mentioned that casually to a family friend when I was about 7 or 9, but at that age I had no idea what that meant and hadn't even known to ask about it till I was pushing 60 and saw his name on some documents not available to me while he was alive. If anyone has relatives he served in WW2 who are still around, find out more from them while you can..
My father was a top turret gunner on the B-26. I never heard him say a bad thing about the plane. OTHER than, on the return trips the captain let a non flying crew member fly the plane back as training in case the pilots were killed. Over the English channel, or near there, they would bail out as no one was allowed to try and land the plane other than the trained pilots. He said on a good day he could keep the plane within +/- 200 feet! My being a retired airline pilot I have to be honest to say, Dad, YOU WOULD HAVE FLUNKED YOUR CHECK RIDE! lol
Another great video but I have a question. I have read and heard in other reports that the loss rate in combat of B-26's was the lowest of any U.S. aircraft, but the data you showed us does not reflect these statements. I am assuming the data you have given is correct and the other reports are not backed up by the facts, unless there is another explanation. I got very excited you mentioned the A-26 today. I hope we will be getting a video on the roles and effectiveness of both the A-20 and A-26 soon. I can only assume a Luftwaffe airbase would be very unhappy to be on the receiving end of an interdiction flight by these aircraft but how effective were they in the destruction of the Luftwaffe?
It doesn't reflect the reality because he cherry-picked reports from the earliest portion of the B-26 combat history, in a time period when B-26s were in use against heavily defended strategic targets while B-25 was in use against soft targets and for maritime patrol; then comparing the loss rates as if they are in any way equivalent.
@@oregongaper That is the literal definition of cherry-picking. Whether he stated the data set or not, it is a deliberately selected data set chosen to present a specific conclusion. And breaking it into two videos is a clickbait tactic designed to drive engagement by ragebaiting with misleading stats in this video, and the promise of "the full story" in a separate video.
The medium bomber was a prewar concept and doctrine that was outdated and not the best use of resources in actual combat. Heavy fighters were more flexible and productive against smaller targets, and heavy bombers were more productive against larger targets. When Jimmy Doolittle took command of the North African air force he told Hap Arnold that he did not want any more medium bombers and wanted heavy bombers instead. There was a tug of war for heavy bomber production between the Mediterranean and UK Army air forces.
I have a photo my father took of General Doolittle talking with the unit CO (a LTC who was shot down and killed a few days later) when he came to their B-26 base (somewhere in Algiers or Libya) with a couple of very cute female B-26 pilots (Dad didn't photograph them unfortunately) and put on demonstrations showing how to fly a B-26 on one engine.
@@kenibnanak5554 When Doolittle was still on the air staff in the U.S. Hap Arnold sent him down to Tampa to investigate the reported handling problems of the B-26 and recommend whether the airplane should continue in production. He determined that it was a training problem rather than an airplane problem. He demonstrated to the training staff how the airplane was easily flown on one engine and could be turned into the dead engine as long as you had sufficient airspeed. Even today a myth persists that you should never turn into the dead engine, so it's no wonder that the relatively inexperienced pilots of the time needed to learn new things. The wing loading of the B-26 was not unusual at all compared to what would soon follow; it was just slightly ahead of its time.
@@kenibnanak5554 I read a book about the women ferry pilots during WW2, and the air corps certainly did use them to demonstrate that, "See, even these women can fly these planes." According to the book, they used them in this way for the B-26 and B-29, and I guess some others. The book never mentioned any of the women going anywhere close to combat areas, however. It seems the time to convince the men was before they were sent overseas, that the army wouldn't send a bunch of pilots over that weren't already confident that they could fly the planes they would be taking into combat. Can't say it isn't true, but certainly doesn't make sense. I know that Doolittle had women demonstrate stateside, I would question they did it in North Africa.
Modern multi-engine training is miles more scientific than what was imposed early in the war. Hazardous exercises are earmarked for extra care and precautions.
How to report favourable ‘evidence’ for a particular slant!, these ‘1943’ reports are obviously from the more lightly engaged, inexperienced and naive pre-war tactics influenced time period up to the end of that _for the USAAF_ early war. The significant air force build up was much later and with crew combat experience and more appropriate advanced training the hotter B-26 turned out to be a great success. In addition to the continuous accumulation of higher empty weights sapping performance, the medium bombers were also flown at much more dangerous lower altitudes resulting in reduced true air and ground speeds which greatly increased their vulnerability to enemy fighters and anti aircraft artillery. The German fighters were more competitive at those medium altitudes with their less sophisticated engine supercharging.
Just to be picky (I love your channel) ... the 40% cost difference between the aircraft doesn't mean you need a 40% premium on performance. This is because the crews (of 6) are more costly than the aircraft itself. The cost difference probably warrants nearer a 15% or 20% improvement to justify the cost.......
Great, gritty study on these two planes. The proportion of armament/crew weight to aircraft weight is so much higher on a US medium bomber that on a heavy bomber. This carries the penalty of either reduced fuel load, or reduced bomb load. Also, over occupied Europe, the flak at the operational altitudes at which these mediums were used, was murderous. At least for the B-25, it's service in the Pacific was exemplary. I was surprised to find out how expensive these planes were, when compared to a 4-engined heavy.
Fascinating. I continue to be impressed by the objective and insightful analysis of the US operational researchers during WWII. The limited usefulness of specialized medium bombers is interesting given that Germany only really had medium bombers, no heavies (in any numbers). And Britain began the war with mainly medium bombers - Wellington and Hampden - and the Whitley which was really a twin engined heavy bomber (it could carry 7,000 lbs bombs). Of these only the Wellington survived throughout the war, but mainly in specialized roles or outside Western Europe (Africa, Far East, Italy) where limited numbers of the best bombers meant that semi-obsolete aircraft were the only available. On the Western European theatre, what would have been the medium bombing role at the start of the war was taken over in the RAF by the Mosquito, and fighter bombers armed with rockets, such as the Typhoon/ Tempest. The USAAF equivalents would be the P-38 and P-41.
Ironic at 9:20 in video that generals Spaatz and Doolittle had told Asst Sec of War Lovett that *"these medium bombers COULD NOT BE USED AS GROUND STRAFFERS" * because adding guns to them to increase their defensive firepower "would reduce their bomb carrying capacity" - when over in the South West Pacific (SWPA) General Kenney's 5th Air Force was doing exactly that! Taking out the glass nose and bombardier's station of B-25 Mitchell bombers, and stuffing the nose full of 8, EIGHT .50 cal machine guns... with an additional two .50's machine guns mounted on each side of the fuselage about 2 foot below the cockpit. This provided TWELVE forward firing .50 caliber machine guns (plus two more in the turret behind the cockpit) to BEAT DOWN anti-aircraft guns as a squadron of B-25 bombers swept over Japanese airbases cutting a murderous scythe of death and destruction, dropping small "Parafrag" bombs in their wake, parachutes that retarded the explosions (so the mother plane could escape the blast) which had the additional benefit of spreading out and covering a bigger path of destruction. These were called "Straffers" and carried the weight of the air war over the SWPA while B-24 Liberators bombed the towns, docks, and runways from higher altitude. When these modified B-25 straffers were used against shipping, Kenney trained his crews in skip-bombing with 500 lb and 1,000 lb bombs, literally "skipping" the delayed-fuze bombs off the surface of the water into the side of the target ship, as the bomber roared overhead just over mast height. The most famous use of these ultra-low level ship killers was also their introduction, at the Battle of Bismarck Sea, where the 5th AAF + RAAF Australians sank every Japanese merchant ship in a 15 ship convoy, and all but 2 or 3 of the escorting destroyers in one day of attacks. (The RAAF Beaufighter gunships armed with four 20mm cannons and eight .303 browning machine guns also did killer service suppressing Japanese anti-aircraft fire). The best place to get the story on the development of these astoundingly effective low-level B-25 bomber/straffers is from General George C Kenney himself, in his book(s) "Air War in the Pacific" or "General Kenney Reports" (or other titles), available at Amazon or online as a free pdf here media.defense.gov/2010/May/26/2001330291/-1/-1/0/AFD-100526-032.pdf There are also good autobiographical books on the B-24 and B-25 bombers (and P-37 and P-47 fighters) employed by Kenney's 5th Air Force, including "Jayhawk: Love, Loss, Liberation, and Terror Over the Pacific" www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52593894 by Jay A Stout writing for pilot George M Cooper, which includes the horrifying personal history of the almost overnight fall of most of the Philippine Islands to the Japanese in December of 1941. Cooper's father was an American from Kansas, his mother was a Filipino woman, and they married and raised their family in Manila. A young George Cooper went off to the University of Kansas where he lived with his father's family (hence the name of his plane and title of book "Jayhawk"), and when war broke out he became a pilot trainee for the U.S. Army Air Corps... and by happenstance he was sent to the SWPA, where he eventually flew B-25 bomber missions over his homeland! And, finally, General George C Kenney wrote another book, a very short one, about his lead maintenance officer (miracle-maker), chief engineer, chief test pilot, and all-round exceptional war-fighter Major (later Col) Paul "Pappy" Gunn. www.everand.com/book/353534046/The-Saga-of-Pappy-Gunn Pappy had been a Navy mechanic + enlisted pilot who retired from the Navy and went to the Philippines to found and help maintain the first Philippines airline. When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked the Philippines, he was immediately drafted in to the US army air force as a transport pilot. He too, had family who were captured by the Japanese in Manila, and they endured the whole war as civilian prisoners, "detainees" on starvation rations amid ferocious Japanese brutality - torturing and killing anyone suspected of communicating with guerillas. Meanwhile Pappy was salvaging fighters and bombers that had been shot-up or wrecked, and putting them back in service, as he flew from hot-spots in the Philippines and New Guinea to Australia and back, (he was shot down by a Jap fighter over one of the many islands in the PIs), keeping the remnants of U.S. airpower going in early 1942. He even flew 2 or 3 solo missions over the Coral Sea in a B-25 bomber in May 1942, looking for the Japanese carriers which would soon take part in the famous Battle of The Coral Sea - if he had found them it would have been a suicide mission! "Pappy" was the man who personally stuffed those 6 (later 8) machine guns in the nose of B-25 bombers, converting them in to straffers, and while he couldn't get in to the Battle of Bismark Sea without pulling rank on the pilots who all wanted to take part in "the big show," he did fly as lead pilot in those converted bombers' first missions, shooting up Japanese airbases and enemy shipping. USAAF commanding General Hap Arnold (and President Roosevelt!) were so impressed by the capabilities of the B-25 straffers at the Battle of Bismarck Sea that Arnold had Gen Kenney send Pappy to the huge Army Air Force development airbase as Wright Field, Ohio, and then on to the North American Aviation NAA factory in Las Angeles, where Pappy showed Dutch Kindleberger's engineers how to install the many machine guns in to the nose of a B-25 on the factory assembly line. Pappy then returned to the SWPA and he continued flying and fighting until the U.S. (re-) Invasion of the Philippines, where he, General Kenney, and others fought to survive the many Japanese air raids on newly constructed U.S. airfields, but Pappy was wounded by a white phosphorous firebomb burning his arm in one raid, the book describes the excruciating horror of being a victim of WP (which the U.S., including Kenney's 5th AAF, used a lot of). While the P-47 fighter was famous for its deadly destructive 8 forward-firing heavy machine guns, even the P-47 had to take a back seat to the B-25 straffers! They were real war winners, SMASH-MOUTH destroying Japanese guns and airfields in a single murderous squadron pass, then coming back to do it again as soon as the fields had been repaired and new planes flown in. The success of these ground-pounding B-25 strafing attacks greatly reduced U.S. and allied casualties in ships, infantry, and in aircrew losses had those Japanese fighters and bombers survived to fly and attack allied forces. The B-25 pilots and crews showed great skill and courage in taking on Japanese AA guns, on airfields and on ships alike, in one-on-one battles to the death.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935- there's real ppl and real stories behind all those statistics! and since the premise is combat effectiveness... well, destroying an entire enemy airfield in one pass is as good as you are going to get 😂
A few years ago i got to fly in a restored B25. It was a great experience and really helpd you understand just a little what those ww2 bonber crews experienced. Unfortunately, that plane was later destroyed in a fatal crash.
At around 7:55, you mention that General Kenney indicated having success with the B-26 in the Pacific. However, the text on the screen indicates that the units were operating successfully in North Africa. I wonder if that had something to do with the more open terrain over the desert vs. the terrain of Europe.
Nice to see you doing videos on mediums. Hit me up if you ever need help with B-26 models, the designations are rather nonsensical and nowhere seems to have a good breakdown (people mix up modified B-26Bs with the B-26B1 designation for the long wing models, among other things). Will say it's a shame so many people seem to be missing the "in 1943" context of the report that is explicitly stated in the video. Also, two small corrections: 1- The B-26's empty weight was never 14,000 or 17,000 pounds. It hovered around 22,000 pounds with the guns included in 1941, then around 23,000-25,000 from 1942 onwards. I saw the report, I know this error is from the report and not from the video. 2- The B-25 did not beat the B-26 to combat, both flew antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific right after Pearl Harbor, and both had their USAAF combat debut on the same day: April 6th, 1942, when the 3rd BG's B-25s attacked Gasmata and the 22nd BG's B-26s attacked Rabaul.
I think he mistakenly compared the max continuous power of the b26 to the all out max speed of the b25. In reality the b26 was a near 340mph top speed at critical altitude 14,000 ish. And that was without getting the Wright engine and turbo to attain the speed (400+) the wings were designed for. Fumbled from the get go the b26 may have just been a bit too far ahead of the training and procedures with too much new tech. In the case of the P47 something like 15% of the 1st squadron trained on them was killed in accidents before it got to England. In many cases just repeating numbers in documents while very nice to have access to leaves out almost all of the context in which the numbers were attained as well as no reference to types of missions flown.
I thought I had read somewhere, years ago, of a B-25 claiming an air-to-air kill, but not from the usual defensive guns, rather by being flown offensively the way a fighter would be flown. Can't find any reference to it anywhere though.
Good luck finding a B-26 still flying. The Army destroyed as many as they could once Germany surrendered and very few survived past 1948. Many of those that had were lend-leased away and written off once they were used up. A very few made it to private hands in any country and most frames that did are too corroded to ever fly again.
I do know the B-26 didn't do well in the Philippines in the early days of the war. Of course MacArthur having squandered a lot of them by clustering them together on the air field with the new M-3 Stuart tanks parked amongst them made them terribly easy pickings for the first Japanese air attacks. Only a few B-26 survived those early raids and once the bases were bombed, what then?
There was a pilot of a B-26 that retired at my hometown and he said the most nervous he was flying it was during the takeoff. It had a relatively fast takeoff speed and if you lost an engine the torque(?) from the one at full power would turn you off the runway. Fully loaded it was almost unsurvivable. I believe he told me B-26 but could have been an A-26.
The single engine take-off safety speed was very, very, critical. You must have a high enough airspeed (and thus, rudder authority) to overcome the tendency of the “working” engine not to pull, or yaw the plane towards the dead engine. The P-38, having engines that rotated outboard, had two “critical” engines; that is, the outboard portion of the down-going blade produced more thrust due to the increased angle of attack (asymmetric disc loading) and being so far out on the wing, the arm was a lot greater, so the single engine safety speed was also quite high for that plane. Every multi-engined aircraft has a vsse, if the airspeed is insufficient, along with a heavy load, pushing on the rudder to the stops will not stop a plane from falling off on a wing. That’s it in a nutshell.
0:25 There was a video here about the effectiveness, combat losses of the B-17 vs. B-24, and turned out that the B-17 was better in every aspect (range, combat load, ruggedness, even price, cost) and still B-24 were built, and even built in much greater numbers. A simple question: Why?? About 1000 units more in 1943 and about 4000 units more in 1944! That's an amazing number! Was the B-24 a much easier, faster buildable aircraft than the B-17, maybe? If was, why the B-24 cost more? (As far as I know, the B-24 was significantly more expensive). Wouldn't be it more logic, to pay compensation to Consolidated, and ask them to build the B-17 rather? Or business and politics are more complicated than that (I think... this will be the answer as well).
They tried to create a higher performing new aerofoil giving high lift and semi laminar airflow but they tried just a bit too hard and the B-24’s Davis aerofoil turned out to be a dog. It was always too close to a stall and could not tolerate even minor icing. The B-17 had an early simple symmetrical aerofoil that was forgiving if not spectacular. With a bad aerofoil the long narrow wings still gave the B-24 good low speed endurance for maritime patrolling.
The combat losses can't be compared directly, because they were often used differently. The B26 was more maneuverable and more rugged. So the B25 was better only when no one was shooting at you.
Kermit Weeks has a B 26 that's airworthy at Fantasy Of Flight. Then there's Flakbait that's been preserved at the Smithsonian, in it's final combat condition, everything that is done to that airframe is done towards preservation not restoration there are still patched up bullet holes from combat that are visible, the paint is still original.
They are hot by modern standards, not suited for low hourly rate unprepared civilian pilots. One was lost due to slow emergency recovery techniques. Perhaps they are best grounded unless flown by very highly proficient pilots, say an airforce historic flight.
I have seen several places that the B-26 had the lowest loss rate of any bomber in the war. I now wonder if what I saw previous is true or is this video more accurate. Based on what is in this video, I can see why they got rid of the B-26 so quickly. My father piloted a B=26 for 65 missions in the ETO so I am always interested in any info I can get about the plane.
Looking at most aspects, the B-25 was very much an example of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ it carried a decent ordinance load. The B-26 doesn’t improve much on the B-25 in performance and bomb load
But it could take more shrapnel and bullet holes before falling out of the sky due to a more robust frame, which is why the 25s often got the soft missions while the 26s wer assigned to the suicidal ones.
All that was use in the ETO, what about in the Pacific? My impression is the B-25 was more heavily used in the pacific, and was more effective compared to heavy bombers (until the B-29 came along), but is that accurate?
It's plausible, simply because there were very few targets suitable for strategic bombing. Island bases were the only useful B-17 and B-24 targets, whereas B-25s and B-26s were great anti-shipping bombers.
My understanding is the B-26s that were in the Pacific and lost in the early days of the war were being replaced only by B-25s so that by the time the campaign was heavily underway there simply weren't that many B-26s left.
Often wondered how much performance increase the B25 would have had IF it had of gotten the later PW R2800 engine ??? The B25 got the Wright R2600 engine because it was AVAILABLE earlier than the R2800........yet the B25's performance seemed to equal the B26 and was easier to fly !!!
Medium bombers were misused. They should have concentrated on tactical targets like motor pools, tank parks, railroad yards, bridges, etc., and not on strategic ones like factories and oil fields.
The loss rate to accidents being the plane and not pilot error I dont think takes in account that after this a certain point they had to increase the takeoff and landing speeds like you mentioned in the video. So its not pilot error but it's not the plane either(though they did blame it on the plane). It was bad training on the airframe.
Medium bombers SEEM less successful in the ETO, except for tactical support. MTO seems to have gotten good use out of their mediums. The Pacific theaters seem to be where the mediums shown, especially in SWPA. Kenny was fighting a much different war and they were often short of assets, so they made the best of what they had. The B25s were modified for ground strafing and got decent results. The B25 was also known as a "ship killer" using skip bombing against merchant shis. They didn't do as well against naval surface combatants. As the old saying goes "you don't go to war with what you want, you go to war with what you have". Only the USA had the luxury of building several models of competing medium bombers through the course of the war.
Paraphrased from an old World War II bomber pilot. The B-24 was a better plane in every regard. But everyone wanted to fly the B-17 because it always got you home.
The B-25 had the 12-50 cal nose version for strafing in the pacific. Even the 75mm cannon version. Otherwise they were so similar as bombers. Saw docs of B-26 pilots talking about how hard it could be to fly and the high landing to stall speed. It wasn’t a bad plane, but if we should have went with one or the other, the B-25 for the whole war was the way to go…
So, it was Heavier, More expensive, less reliable, more dangerous to fly, and less survivable than the B-25, and was neither faster nor able to carry larger bomb load. Not great stats.
The B-26 "Marauder" was originally designed by Glen L Martin's Martin Aircraft Co, before the war, to use the huge Wright Cyclone engines later used on the B-29 bombers, which would have given the B-26 a 400 mph attack speed! But the engines weren't even close to ready, plus they would have been far too expensive for pre-war orders, so an aircraft that was designed for 2x 2,400 hp engines had to make do with 2 smaller 1,800 hp in engines in early B-26 production aircraft (later improved to 2,000 hp). So instead Martin engineers used the next best thing - the P&W R-2800 "double Wasp" radial engine... which later would become famous for ruggedness and reliability, but in 1941 and 1942 were new AND PRONE TO developmental PROBLEMS... which means they FAILED OFTEN - and since the B-26 was one of THE FIRST aircraft to use them, many B-26s were lost when an engine failed! This horror of having an engine go out was worse on a B-26, with it's high wing loading and many inexperienced young pilots not knowing how to respond - so many aircraft were lost with all their crews. Once the PW R-2800s were perfected, and B-26 pilots were WELL TRAINED to deal with ALL ENGINE-OUT emergencies (especially on takeoff), the aircraft losses were greatly reduced. In combat over Europe, the fast and rugged "mini-Fortresses" had the highest survivability statistics of all U.S. bombers, although this was partly because they did not penetrated as far in to enemy skies as the B-17 & B-25 heavies, so they were exposed to less Luftwaffe fighter attacks and less heavy enemy AA concentrations. B-26s were very effective on D-Day, they wiped out the German positions ON "UTAH" BEACH, GREATLY REDUCING U.S. invasion casualties there, while over on "OMAHA" beach that sector had been assigned B-17 bombers... WHICH MISSED their targets entirely that morning... so OMAHA BEACH became a BLOOD BATH for attacking U.S. troops! B-26s didn't get the credit they deserved, for telling the story would show how the AAF _BOTCHED_ their assigned bombing of German guns and pillboxes on Omaha beach.
All valid facts. But that 1:72 Airfix B25 with the 75mm howitzer in the nose ... that was the business. And the B26 model with all the .50 guns on the side of the plane, near the cockpit. Oh boy. Painted in DDay stripes, that was a real nice looking model. The things the Yanks did to their B25's for attacking barges off of New Guinea, that was nasty. And when the invasion started and McArthur said - shoot the swimmers, three days in a row, well, that was total war. Maybe a little pay back too.
Gregs auto and aircraft youtube has a whole video on the b26. The original design was expecting a more powerful engine, higher speed - and that higher speed envelope determined thevwing design.
Why the difference in man-hours to produce & final unit cost to the government between these 2 medium bombers? Was Martin’s B26 a more complex design to build or did North American have a better system for mass production? Possibly the answer is a little of both. Only the USA during WW2 could afford to produce 2 heavy bombers, 2 medium bombers and how many different fighter types.
Then the A-26 light bomber, which was heavier, faster, and could carry a far greater weapons load than either of the medium bombers, supplanted both the B-25 and the B-26.
This goes a long ways to explaining why B 25s work well in the Pacific. Much less AA. Far easier to attack a ship than a ground target ringed with AA. Also anti shipping work fit the medium well.
As a rule of thumb, any plane called "The Widow Maker" should be flown with caution!. The B-26 was singled out by the Truman Committee report as an example of a defective product being delivered to the military due to its high loss and accident rate. Martin knew that making the wing larger would solve a lot of the problems with the B-26 but took no action until pretty much forced to.
The Truman Committee was political theatre designed to increase the political profile of one Harry S Truman. The B-26 suffered from being rushed straight from the drawing board into production and then dropped into flight training system that didn't know how to deal with the engine out emergencies. That and faulty maintenance procedures that lead to frequent failures of the Curtis Electric props the B-26 was equipped with. It took alot of work to correct the real problems and its bad reputation but it turned out to be extremely successful when used as it was intended - medium altitude bombing.
Airplane that pushed past previous performance boundaries often required improved flying technique as well, but often airplanes were blamed as widowmakers simply because their pilots were not up to learning new techniques. Any pilot of a modern military aircraft or airliner would chuckle at the idea of the B-26 wing loading being a problem.
This comparison needs to get into the weeds with respect to differences in use. See John Bruning's "Indestructible" as well as other sources. Spaatz, Tedder and Doolittle apparently never met Kenny and Gunn.
I often see other really interesting things in the tables and data you include and here's today's example: (0:45) In the table...Medium bombers......B-25, ok....B-26, yeah....Wait, what the heck's a B-42? I check Wikipedia and there it is....The Douglas Mixmaster.....Two contra-rotating pusher propellers on the extreme rear, behind the tail planes, on a medium bomber, with engines inside the fuselage, and defensive guns folded into the trailing edges of the wings... Umm, wow. Ok...
The DH Mosquito was better than both of them. The same bombload, but 120 mph faster so very small loss rate. It also only needed 2 crew and yielded more accurate bombing.
I don't know how this channel does not have more subscribers. Love the content.
I've thought the same. I've learnt more from this channel than any other I can think of and I follow a number of excellent channels.
because too many people can't be bothered with facts
@@SoloRenegade that and he speaks with the same monotous voice. He tries infelction but its like an old professor in school, although he sounds young enough
I met a man who was a pilot during World War II, who flew both the B-26 and the B-25. He began flying in the B-26, and after they were withdrawn from service flew B-25s for a short time as they were being phased out. He preferred the B-26 as being the higher performer of the two, but admitted the B-25 was much more forgiving, and easier to fly.
I can corroborate your comments. I talked to a really great pilot and long-time Boeing Employees Flying Association instructor, Cliff Smith, and he echoes your words. The B-26 had more teething issues at the beginning of the war. They weighted it down quite a bit with armament. But when they came out with the R2800, the B-26 was much better. The B-25 was much more docile to handle as it could fly at a slower speed, which is helpful when you're in a landing or slow flight configuration.
Thanks for the history! You are remembering it.
If you have 2 rudders, each in the slipstream of a propeller, the plane will be much more controllable when flying single engine. Much safer
I find it interesting on how all aspects and operations of the US military during WWII were thoroughly documented and studied. And also all of the documentation and review was done the old school way with manually operated typewriters, slide rulers and slide calculators, manual calculations, etc.
Most nations did analysis, but the USA seems to have assigned (or had more to assign) more resources to it and done a more complete job. Some analysis has turned out to be over optimistic or inaccurate, but it looks to have broadly stood the test of time.
What is particularly evident is that USA statistics are FAR better presented than other Allied nations. The aircraft manuals are generally better too.
We were the rich kids and had big oceans between us and our foes
That's how you get good at war. By keeping track of what works and not through numbers.
The Brits were good with operations research too.
@jimmiller5600 I'm British, but in terms of breadth and quality of presentation, the USA had the edge. There are a few places I might suggest that British research was more accurate, and the use of sampling theory to determine production numbers via serial numbers was impressive.
Trivia: The B-26's epithet "Flying Prostitute" was a comment on its original small wings. The B-26 was a huge aircraft, it wasn't that much smaller than a B-17, in fact the fuselage had a lot more girth. Yet it had relatively small wings.
So the joke goes that "ladies of the night" have no job during the daytime, when everyone else works, yet they can always pay their bills on time.... that is, they have no visible means of support.... like the B-26 and its tiny wings.
I was hoping someone would explain that. Makes sense.
Haha, I imagine it did a lot of work at night too. Cheers!
If I ever wondered what the 'army' of non-combat staff boys that ran around behind the scenes clutching stacks of paper were doing... The reports you reference are incredible. You do a fine job of parsing through the mountains of data to glean the key points. I also appreciate you showing pictures of the various authors. Very interesting to a buff like me to read the actual words of Doolittle, Kenney, et al . Well done, and keep on keeping on!
My father was a B-26 pilot (63 missions). He loved that "hot" plane and said it was best plane in the war.
@@nandi123 that's a lot of missions!
Badass
Over the decades I have had some conversations with folks who served with my own Dad on B-26s and I think they all liked it. Back in the 70s through the 90s there was a group called the Marauder Society they all belonged to that was trying to repair a B-26 air frame and get it flying again. Eventually they did, unfortunately, on it's first flight, the pilot, a prior WW2 B-26 pilot, after radioing the ground that it was great, handled like it was new and he felt like a kid again, had a sudden fatal heart attack and died when the plane nose dived and crashed. And that was that. :(
@kenibnanak5554 were any killed other than the pilot?
😬
Thanks for prompting me to look up the B-42. So glad one is preserved at the NMUSAF.
LOL, me too.
😲What in the world...???
Very awesome airplane, and it is called the XB-42 Mixmaster!?!
I was surprised that there was no reference made to the use of the modified B-25 strafer a/c in the Pacific. The 345th Bomb Group (Air Apaches) created havoc with low level strafing against ground and naval targets from 1943 -45. The group history book details the use of "skip" bombing as an exponentially more accurate technique against naval vessels than traditional medium altitude level bombing while field modifications of the addition of up to a dozen forward firing .50 caliber machine guns was also effective against airfields, smaller ships and assorted ground targets. I am not aware that B-26 were employed in a similar manner in either the European or Pacific areas.
The B25 played an important role in the Battle of the Bismarck sea strafing and skip bombing.
(see my comment above)
@@vvvci Excellent summary of what I was trying to say. I can recommend the 345th BG history "Warpath in the Pacific" for detailed history down to individual aircraft disposition/career.
There was a strategic bombing bias in the upper echelons of the USAAF and RAF that saw it as the "be all to end all". Anything that took resources away from that was looked down upon. This included using bombers for strafing or anti ship missions. There was a shortage of long range aircraft dedicated to U-boat hunting during the Battle of the Atlantic because the higher ups in the USAAC/F and RAF fought against taking aircraft away from strategic bombing. The theory being that strategic bombing would eliminate the sub bases and submarine manufacturing capability solving the problem that way.
Great analysis!
The B-25 really seems to be an ourstanding airplane.
When I was a wee lad, I thought the B-25 looked positively ancient and fuddy duddy compared to the sleek modern B-26. It wasn't until much later that I learned some specs and realized he B-25 was a better plane. But n my defense, I probably was confused by the later A-26 which was renamed to B-26 and was a whole lot better than the B-25.
@@buff123 even more so when you realise it developed from an A-series design. But the B-26 was intended to be very different but it didn't get the hoped-for engine, getting only about 2/3 of what it was designed to have.
Dad was a waist gunner in a B-26, he never said anything bad about it. The B-26 did bring him home. He was late war, '44-'45. He did mention the flak and he carried German steel in his body.
My own father was a unit photographer (320th) who also manned the waist gun when not clicking a camera shutter. Sometimes he also pinch hit as a radio operator. Like yours my father spoke very little about his experiences beyond telling us it was the raid on Casino that turned his hair white. It's kind of a shame really because I found the unit diary and all of the After Action Reports (which often named him) and know a lot more now and have a zillion questions to ask him, but he is 20 years gone so I can't.
@@kenibnanak5554 I know how you feel. My father flew with the 394th out of England and then France. He's been dead 23 years and I have so many questions I would ask him now. One of the problems was that he, like so many others, just didn't talk about his experiences until a few years before he died, and then it was mostly humorous things of a non-combat nature, which I was fortunate to hear.
My dad was a waist gunner on a B26 too! 9th AAC.
@@evanswinford7165 Yeah, I think I knew him...
@@oldoarsman6322 When about?
Seems like the USAF knew that the B-26 and B-25 were not efficient or effective for the role they were expected to fill, but, they were also of the opinion that they had to keep medium bombers in the field because there was no alternative. Very interesting video.
In Europe the medium bombers took care of the ~250-300mile radius and allowed the Heavies to range farther into Germany. Mediums did a great job isolating the invasion beaches from supplies inland and turning Utah Beach into a Moonscape with about 3 Germans left to defend it.
I've been asking for more videos on medium bombers. Thanks!
I was at home in the UK during the 50th anniversary of D-Day when I heard several aircraft engines and when I looked up there were three B-26 Marauders flying passed. A big but welcome surprise.
My Dad would have loved to see that.
From my understanding, since the B26 was mass produced straight off the drawing board without even prototypes being built there was always going to be serious issues. This was the initial root of the problem with its high loss and accident rates. And as the data provided, much off it was gathered prior to the work that went into sorting the B26 out. The other cause of combat losses was low level operations which took a heavy toll, understandably. The main structural change being an increased wing span that helped things considerably. If I’m not mistaken, certainly after those changes the loss rate improved and it became a much safer aircraft. As for the bombing accuracy, I can’t recall how that improved as the aircraft should have been more a more stable platform, for a 2 engined medium bomber. Also, bombing from a higher altitude, between 8000 ft and 12000 ft also reduced losses. Both aircraft were good but I do remember reading pilots recalling the B26 as a hot rod especially when it was lightened without bombs etc. Never heard anything like that about the Mitchell.
Thanks for another in-depth analysis. Excellent video!
In his autobiography, (I Could Never be so Lucky Again,) Doolittle describes how, as commander of the 12th Air Force in North Africa, he would visit the B-26 units and give demonstration flights. While in flight, he would shut down one engine, then fly the plane. Then restart that engine and shut down the other. This to inform the pilots that with proper training and confidence they could safely fly the B-26.
Twin engine planes are notorious for 'torque rolling' into the ground on final approach with one engine out. The smaller wing area of the early B-26 made it particularly vulnerable. Add pilots with not so much experience and...
Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles did a post "B-26 Unsafe at any Speed" covered the problem with losing an engine on takeoff or landing. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle (greatest aviator in history IMHO) doing a demonstration for new pilots would be like Michael Jordan showing middle school kids how easy it is to dunk a basketball!
My father was there for at least one of those meets. Not well known I guess is that General Doolittle didn't come alone. He brought some expert, and very good looking, USAAF Woman's Auxiliary Flying Service (WAFS) pilots with him to assist in holding the men's attention. I have a photo Dad took of General Doolittle joking around with the 320th Group Commander.
@@peashooterc9475 The smaller wing area has nothing to do with it. If the speed is kept above Vmc the airplane will fly straight. The smaller wing area simply requires a higher approach speed, which actually increases rudder authority. A twin at light weigh can have its final approach speed limited by Vmca rather than Vstall.
The Mosquito had a lower wing loading than the B-26, yet it also suffered insufficient directional control if it lost an engine at the wrong time during takeoff or landing. It also had a high Vmc due to a small rudder. But the Mosquito narrative is so positive that nobody cares to cast aspersions on its handling characteristics.
Comments including ‘torque’ show the ignorant _tell._
Thank you for this video. My grandfather flew in B-26 S/N 43-34228 and was killed in a midair crash on a mission in February 1945. Widowmaker indeed.
One a day in Tampa Bay. The B26 had Curtiss electric props. The crew chiefs would test cycle the props off the batteries. Later the plane was started by a start cart. During flight when the props were synchronized, the depleted batteries went flat, so did the props and splash. The whole nation was going up the learning curve. Many planes were lost due to screw ups, like using the wrong grade of gas, or maintenance errors, and green crews.
The B26 loaded take off speed was ~150mph and cruise around 200. Not a lot of margin.
Hydraulic props are used today in all serious planes.
The A20 doesnt get much attention but it was potent.
I agree. My uncle Joe. P flew one in New Guinea under General Kenney. 184 missions certified in a form-letter from General Kenney's office.
Douglas always made good flying aircraft. My dad loved the SBD.
another in depth informative and interesting video . Thank you.
Very happy to see these new videos on the medium bombers.
Found this video fascinating. My grandfather was a military flyer from 1935 to 1958.. he was flying B4 keystones and B10’s prior to the war. He has photos of b25’s in 1940 when they came out. Has a photo from 1940 or early 41 of a B26 that experienced a nose gear collapse on takeoff and the propeller cut into the fuselage cutting off the co-pilots leg. Guy bled to death.
Spent time on B17’s, later B29’s. At wars end he was involved in testing aircraft for combat performance. He specifically was doing endurance testing of b25’s, A-26’s and B32’s. Talked about taking b32’s right from the factor to the boneyard at wars end.
Post war he was using b17’s for VIP transport. As well as B25’s and A26’s. Early Air Force years used a lot of leftover ww2 inventory for currency training.
US Army and Navy pilot and crew losses from training and routine flights were almost as bad, sometimes far worse than combat loses!
Famous WW I "ace" Pilot Eddy Rickenbacker was lost at sea with the rest of the crew of when their transport aircraft went down from mechanical failure, until they were miraculously found and rescued in life rafts two weeks later. Many B-29 crews went down from mechanical failures in long flights over open ocean to Japan - many were never seen again. During fighting in New Guinea, a C-47 transport loaded with pilots who had survived the brutal fighting long enough to go on leave to Australia had an engine fire in their transport, it went down with loss of all aboard.
New Guinea had tall mountains which devoured many aircrews in bad weather (foul weather got many aircrews over socked-in England and Europe, and in America training flights as well), and Navy pilots and crew risked death with every carrier takeoff and landing, there's video of a Corsair pilot taking off too steeply, the plane stalled, winged-over to the left, and plummeted in to the ocean as the deck crew could do nothing but watch - the plane sank immediately, the pilot was gone in an instant. And of course carrier deck landings were even more hazardous, especially in bad weather or trying to land in a shot-up aircraft
Gotta love the nicknames for the B-26:
"One a day into Tampa Bay"
and
"The Baltimore Whore" (With the relatively small wings, it had no visible means of support, and Martin was based in... Baltimore.)
Mumble years ago, there was a guy in one of the old Usenet newsgroups who had been a B-26 Bombardier in the ETO until he transitioned to the A-26 right at the end of the war. He had some amazing stories.
@@CecilHabermacher the A-26 had a difficult start as the lateral visibility was poor which made flying in formation less safe than it should have been. Fantastic performance, though.
Dont forget the "flying prostitute"
Training was more or less incompetent early on. The plane could do things the instructors were not up to speed with.
Would be great to see a similar comparison in '44 & '45, once they actually figured out how to maintain and utilize the B-26 and lowered its sortie loss ratio to be the best in the USAAF.
This is what I had always understood as well, that ultimately the B26 was the most survivable aircraft in the US inventory. “Flak Bait” in the NASM with 206 missions to its credit would also seem to bear this out.
@@erickleven1712 one of my wife's more distant relatives flew B-26s but didn't survive
Yes! I would like to see the late war, and total war comparisons. I was under the impression that the B-26 did quite well when all was said and done.
Just confirmed it...B-26 had lowest U.S. bomber loss rate of the war at 0.5% per sortie. This video paints an incomplete & misleading picture.
@dgott7726 it's tricky, as you have to look at equivalent missions as much as possible (something brought up in B-17 to B-24 comparisons). The B-25 flew a lot of ground and sea attack missions in the PTO which had a high loss rate. Equally, the B-26 did a fair few low level missions in the ETO, notably on D-Day. Although the B-26 had the lowest final loss rate of any bomber in WW2, selecting a number of missions for each that match is the better metric.
This having been said, the USAAF would also factor in bombs on target - so a 50% higher loss rate per sortie might be acceptable if effects on target were double, for example. Or even twice the loss rate might be accepted as in war time is factor, so being able to take out a target in one raid rather than two a couple of days apart might be worth it.
Two words: Flak Bait. A B-26B Marauder with 202 combat missions and 750 hours in the ETO with zero crew losses. Came back twice on 1 engine and more than 1000 bullet strikes. I'd bet if you did a detailed analysis of Marauder vs. Mitchell missions, the Marauders were assigned the more difficult missions. Flying a heavy bomber at medium altitude in the ETO was a death sentence.
According to my father-in-law, his squadron of B-26s flew a great many low level missions in the ETO after Normandy. Attacking bridges and rail lines to interdict supplies and prevent vehicles from making it to the front. He loved the B-26, but said the low level flying was terrifying.
@@M1903a4he was comparing b17 and b24 vs med 25 and 26
In the early North Africa days the USAAF didn't really have the hang of things (being polite) and from reading the unit diaries and AARs of the 320th BG the first few missions were at absurdly low altitudes and losses were fairly high. In the desert you could see the planes coming head on at you at 300 - 400 foot altitude for many miles and have much time to prepare. There was also some fairly significant issues with the bomb bay doors and possibly how the bombs were stacked in the planes. I see multiple early AARs speaking of bombs not dropping while some brave soul jumped up and down on the stuck ones, at least one AAR specifically reporting the instant the neighboring plane opened it's bomb bay doors all it's bombs exploded, others speaking of bombs just dangling half in and half out of the plane while the pilot tried to shake the plane to free them, etc. Sudden changes in altitude and direction or speed to throw off enemy gunnery and make them harder to hit was a tactic that took a few mission disasters to work out. By the time British Sword Fish took over the anti-submarine duty the mission survival rate was much higher, which implies both better tactics and a decent resolution to the bomb bay doors and bomb rack issues.
@@GordonKley-nz4qm I suppose you missed the " Marauder vs. Mitchell missions" part. He opined that the Marauders were assigned the more difficult missions. I was providing some anecdotal evidence to support that.
What value are you adding to the comments?
One VERY important fact you overlooked. The USAAF never operated B-25s in the Northern ETO, only MTO and Pacific. Flying missions over the heart of Festung Europa was more dangerous than over and around the Mediterranean area including Italy and Southern France, Basically, North of the Alps was B-26.
This was personally interesting as my father served on multiple B-26s from 42 through the end of 44 as an aerial photographer/gunner. Unit photographers were considered Staff personnel (as opposed to being considered designated air combat personnel) and accordingly for a long time they did not get combat pay, nor was the number of combat missions they were assigned to fly on counted or used as the basis for rotation back to stateside.
It made them happy when they were finally designated combat personnel, but it kind of sucked that their next mission after that decision was received was given number# 1 as most of them already had enough or almost enough combat flights under their belts to qualify for immediate rotation back to the states. But mission 1 the next mission was.
I very much wish much that I have read or heard about the planes since his passing had been available to me as discussion topics before he passed in the 1990s and well before the coming of the Internet. We had some conversations about the different plane types and his experiences, but not knowing much in those days I didn't know what to ask about. I had often wondered why the B-25 seemed to be preferred by the USAAF but now I understand the 'Bean counter' point of view. I had not previously known of the price disparity between the two aircraft. Certainly a 40+% cost difference coupled with diminished performance encourages phasing out the more expensive less efficient bomber. Also related, only long after he passed did I find the After Action reports of missions he had participated in online along with the unit diary and mention of him in some early Operation Torch documents. The price he paid for taking French in an NYC high school was an eenie meenie miney moe selection by the USAAF to be part of an advance team. I remember he mentioned that casually to a family friend when I was about 7 or 9, but at that age I had no idea what that meant and hadn't even known to ask about it till I was pushing 60 and saw his name on some documents not available to me while he was alive. If anyone has relatives he served in WW2 who are still around, find out more from them while you can..
This was a well done video. Great info/numbers.
Blinkered early miss-assessment honestly reproduced here.
My father was a top turret gunner on the B-26. I never heard him say a bad thing about the plane. OTHER than, on the return trips the captain let a non flying crew member fly the plane back as training in case the pilots were killed. Over the English channel, or near there, they would bail out as no one was allowed to try and land the plane other than the trained pilots. He said on a good day he could keep the plane within +/- 200 feet! My being a retired airline pilot I have to be honest to say, Dad, YOU WOULD HAVE FLUNKED YOUR CHECK RIDE! lol
Another great video but I have a question. I have read and heard in other reports that the loss rate in combat of B-26's was the lowest of any U.S. aircraft, but the data you showed us does not reflect these statements. I am assuming the data you have given is correct and the other reports are not backed up by the facts, unless there is another explanation.
I got very excited you mentioned the A-26 today. I hope we will be getting a video on the roles and effectiveness of both the A-20 and A-26 soon. I can only assume a Luftwaffe airbase would be very unhappy to be on the receiving end of an interdiction flight by these aircraft but how effective were they in the destruction of the Luftwaffe?
It doesn't reflect the reality because he cherry-picked reports from the earliest portion of the B-26 combat history, in a time period when B-26s were in use against heavily defended strategic targets while B-25 was in use against soft targets and for maritime patrol; then comparing the loss rates as if they are in any way equivalent.
@@bronco5334 Not cherry picked at all. He stated the time period as 1943 and said that another video will cover the late war period.
@@oregongaper That is the literal definition of cherry-picking. Whether he stated the data set or not, it is a deliberately selected data set chosen to present a specific conclusion.
And breaking it into two videos is a clickbait tactic designed to drive engagement by ragebaiting with misleading stats in this video, and the promise of "the full story" in a separate video.
He might have mentioned the flaws of 1943 dogma.
Unfortunately, the aircraft performance tables are illegible because they're too small. Any chance you could post larger images?
Great video. Thank you for not producing the garbage AI junk that pollutes RUclips.
This early assessment was not exactly balanced either.
The medium bomber was a prewar concept and doctrine that was outdated and not the best use of resources in actual combat. Heavy fighters were more flexible and productive against smaller targets, and heavy bombers were more productive against larger targets. When Jimmy Doolittle took command of the North African air force he told Hap Arnold that he did not want any more medium bombers and wanted heavy bombers instead. There was a tug of war for heavy bomber production between the Mediterranean and UK Army air forces.
I have a photo my father took of General Doolittle talking with the unit CO (a LTC who was shot down and killed a few days later) when he came to their B-26 base (somewhere in Algiers or Libya) with a couple of very cute female B-26 pilots (Dad didn't photograph them unfortunately) and put on demonstrations showing how to fly a B-26 on one engine.
@@kenibnanak5554 When Doolittle was still on the air staff in the U.S. Hap Arnold sent him down to Tampa to investigate the reported handling problems of the B-26 and recommend whether the airplane should continue in production. He determined that it was a training problem rather than an airplane problem. He demonstrated to the training staff how the airplane was easily flown on one engine and could be turned into the dead engine as long as you had sufficient airspeed. Even today a myth persists that you should never turn into the dead engine, so it's no wonder that the relatively inexperienced pilots of the time needed to learn new things. The wing loading of the B-26 was not unusual at all compared to what would soon follow; it was just slightly ahead of its time.
@@kenibnanak5554 I read a book about the women ferry pilots during WW2, and the air corps certainly did use them to demonstrate that, "See, even these women can fly these planes." According to the book, they used them in this way for the B-26 and B-29, and I guess some others. The book never mentioned any of the women going anywhere close to combat areas, however. It seems the time to convince the men was before they were sent overseas, that the army wouldn't send a bunch of pilots over that weren't already confident that they could fly the planes they would be taking into combat. Can't say it isn't true, but certainly doesn't make sense. I know that Doolittle had women demonstrate stateside, I would question they did it in North Africa.
Modern multi-engine training is miles more scientific than what was imposed early in the war. Hazardous exercises are earmarked for extra care and precautions.
As always, your research is outstanding!
How to report favourable ‘evidence’ for a particular slant!, these ‘1943’ reports are obviously from the more lightly engaged, inexperienced and naive pre-war tactics influenced time period up to the end of that _for the USAAF_ early war. The significant air force build up was much later and with crew combat experience and more appropriate advanced training the hotter B-26 turned out to be a great success.
In addition to the continuous accumulation of higher empty weights sapping performance, the medium bombers were also flown at much more dangerous lower altitudes resulting in reduced true air and ground speeds which greatly increased their vulnerability to enemy fighters and anti aircraft artillery. The German fighters were more competitive at those medium altitudes with their less sophisticated engine supercharging.
As always, an excellent presentation!🛩🛩🛩🛩 Mission accomplished.
Just to be picky (I love your channel) ... the 40% cost difference between the aircraft doesn't mean you need a 40% premium on performance. This is because the crews (of 6) are more costly than the aircraft itself. The cost difference probably warrants nearer a 15% or 20% improvement to justify the cost.......
My father had a choice between the B-24, A-20 and B-25. He chose the B-25. Crews called it "old reliable."
"Medium bombers are not useful as ground strafers"
B-25 J: "Hold my 18 .50 cals"
Sorry to point out, but you have the pics and names of the Invader and Havoc swapped starting at the 10:27 mark :)
Thanks for the sharp eye, I corrected the image
Interesting that the A-26 was considered a light bomber when it could carry 6000 lbs of bombs.
There's more to the classification than bombload. Total weight, range, crew complement, defensive firepower, etc.
Great, gritty study on these two planes. The proportion of armament/crew weight to aircraft weight is so much higher on a US medium bomber that on a heavy bomber. This carries the penalty of either reduced fuel load, or reduced bomb load. Also, over occupied Europe, the flak at the operational altitudes at which these mediums were used, was murderous. At least for the B-25, it's service in the Pacific was exemplary. I was surprised to find out how expensive these planes were, when compared to a 4-engined heavy.
Fascinating. I continue to be impressed by the objective and insightful analysis of the US operational researchers during WWII.
The limited usefulness of specialized medium bombers is interesting given that Germany only really had medium bombers, no heavies (in any numbers).
And Britain began the war with mainly medium bombers - Wellington and Hampden - and the Whitley which was really a twin engined heavy bomber (it could carry 7,000 lbs bombs). Of these only the Wellington survived throughout the war, but mainly in specialized roles or outside Western Europe (Africa, Far East, Italy) where limited numbers of the best bombers meant that semi-obsolete aircraft were the only available.
On the Western European theatre, what would have been the medium bombing role at the start of the war was taken over in the RAF by the Mosquito, and fighter bombers armed with rockets, such as the Typhoon/ Tempest. The USAAF equivalents would be the P-38 and P-41.
I'd love to see a video on the combat record of my favorite WWII combat aircraft - the Douglas DB7/A-20 Boston/Havoc series.
Ironic at 9:20 in video that generals Spaatz and Doolittle had told Asst Sec of War Lovett that *"these medium bombers COULD NOT BE USED AS GROUND STRAFFERS" * because adding guns to them to increase their defensive firepower "would reduce their bomb carrying capacity" - when over in the South West Pacific (SWPA) General Kenney's 5th Air Force was doing exactly that! Taking out the glass nose and bombardier's station of B-25 Mitchell bombers, and stuffing the nose full of 8, EIGHT .50 cal machine guns... with an additional two .50's machine guns mounted on each side of the fuselage about 2 foot below the cockpit.
This provided TWELVE forward firing .50 caliber machine guns (plus two more in the turret behind the cockpit) to BEAT DOWN anti-aircraft guns as a squadron of B-25 bombers swept over Japanese airbases cutting a murderous scythe of death and destruction, dropping small "Parafrag" bombs in their wake, parachutes that retarded the explosions (so the mother plane could escape the blast) which had the additional benefit of spreading out and covering a bigger path of destruction. These were called "Straffers" and carried the weight of the air war over the SWPA while B-24 Liberators bombed the towns, docks, and runways from higher altitude.
When these modified B-25 straffers were used against shipping, Kenney trained his crews in skip-bombing with 500 lb and 1,000 lb bombs, literally "skipping" the delayed-fuze bombs off the surface of the water into the side of the target ship, as the bomber roared overhead just over mast height. The most famous use of these ultra-low level ship killers was also their introduction, at the Battle of Bismarck Sea, where the 5th AAF + RAAF Australians sank every Japanese merchant ship in a 15 ship convoy, and all but 2 or 3 of the escorting destroyers in one day of attacks. (The RAAF Beaufighter gunships armed with four 20mm cannons and eight .303 browning machine guns also did killer service suppressing Japanese anti-aircraft fire).
The best place to get the story on the development of these astoundingly effective low-level B-25 bomber/straffers is from General George C Kenney himself, in his book(s) "Air War in the Pacific" or "General Kenney Reports" (or other titles), available at Amazon or online as a free pdf here media.defense.gov/2010/May/26/2001330291/-1/-1/0/AFD-100526-032.pdf
There are also good autobiographical books on the B-24 and B-25 bombers (and P-37 and P-47 fighters) employed by Kenney's 5th Air Force, including "Jayhawk: Love, Loss, Liberation, and Terror Over the Pacific" www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52593894 by Jay A Stout writing for pilot George M Cooper, which includes the horrifying personal history of the almost overnight fall of most of the Philippine Islands to the Japanese in December of 1941. Cooper's father was an American from Kansas, his mother was a Filipino woman, and they married and raised their family in Manila. A young George Cooper went off to the University of Kansas where he lived with his father's family (hence the name of his plane and title of book "Jayhawk"), and when war broke out he became a pilot trainee for the U.S. Army Air Corps... and by happenstance he was sent to the SWPA, where he eventually flew B-25 bomber missions over his homeland!
And, finally, General George C Kenney wrote another book, a very short one, about his lead maintenance officer (miracle-maker), chief engineer, chief test pilot, and all-round exceptional war-fighter Major (later Col) Paul "Pappy" Gunn. www.everand.com/book/353534046/The-Saga-of-Pappy-Gunn Pappy had been a Navy mechanic + enlisted pilot who retired from the Navy and went to the Philippines to found and help maintain the first Philippines airline. When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked the Philippines, he was immediately drafted in to the US army air force as a transport pilot. He too, had family who were captured by the Japanese in Manila, and they endured the whole war as civilian prisoners, "detainees" on starvation rations amid ferocious Japanese brutality - torturing and killing anyone suspected of communicating with guerillas.
Meanwhile Pappy was salvaging fighters and bombers that had been shot-up or wrecked, and putting them back in service, as he flew from hot-spots in the Philippines and New Guinea to Australia and back, (he was shot down by a Jap fighter over one of the many islands in the PIs), keeping the remnants of U.S. airpower going in early 1942. He even flew 2 or 3 solo missions over the Coral Sea in a B-25 bomber in May 1942, looking for the Japanese carriers which would soon take part in the famous Battle of The Coral Sea - if he had found them it would have been a suicide mission!
"Pappy" was the man who personally stuffed those 6 (later 8) machine guns in the nose of B-25 bombers, converting them in to straffers, and while he couldn't get in to the Battle of Bismark Sea without pulling rank on the pilots who all wanted to take part in "the big show," he did fly as lead pilot in those converted bombers' first missions, shooting up Japanese airbases and enemy shipping. USAAF commanding General Hap Arnold (and President Roosevelt!) were so impressed by the capabilities of the B-25 straffers at the Battle of Bismarck Sea that Arnold had Gen Kenney send Pappy to the huge Army Air Force development airbase as Wright Field, Ohio, and then on to the North American Aviation NAA factory in Las Angeles, where Pappy showed Dutch Kindleberger's engineers how to install the many machine guns in to the nose of a B-25 on the factory assembly line.
Pappy then returned to the SWPA and he continued flying and fighting until the U.S. (re-) Invasion of the Philippines, where he, General Kenney, and others fought to survive the many Japanese air raids on newly constructed U.S. airfields, but Pappy was wounded by a white phosphorous firebomb burning his arm in one raid, the book describes the excruciating horror of being a victim of WP (which the U.S., including Kenney's 5th AAF, used a lot of).
While the P-47 fighter was famous for its deadly destructive 8 forward-firing heavy machine guns, even the P-47 had to take a back seat to the B-25 straffers! They were real war winners, SMASH-MOUTH destroying Japanese guns and airfields in a single murderous squadron pass, then coming back to do it again as soon as the fields had been repaired and new planes flown in. The success of these ground-pounding B-25 strafing attacks greatly reduced U.S. and allied casualties in ships, infantry, and in aircrew losses had those Japanese fighters and bombers survived to fly and attack allied forces.
The B-25 pilots and crews showed great skill and courage in taking on Japanese AA guns, on airfields and on ships alike, in one-on-one battles to the death.
Could you expand on that a bit?
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935- there's real ppl and real stories behind all those statistics!
and since the premise is combat effectiveness... well, destroying an entire enemy airfield in one pass is as good as you are going to get 😂
A few years ago i got to fly in a restored B25. It was a great experience and really helpd you understand just a little what those ww2 bonber crews experienced. Unfortunately, that plane was later destroyed in a fatal crash.
At around 7:55, you mention that General Kenney indicated having success with the B-26 in the Pacific. However, the text on the screen indicates that the units were operating successfully in North Africa. I wonder if that had something to do with the more open terrain over the desert vs. the terrain of Europe.
Nice to see you doing videos on mediums. Hit me up if you ever need help with B-26 models, the designations are rather nonsensical and nowhere seems to have a good breakdown (people mix up modified B-26Bs with the B-26B1 designation for the long wing models, among other things). Will say it's a shame so many people seem to be missing the "in 1943" context of the report that is explicitly stated in the video.
Also, two small corrections:
1- The B-26's empty weight was never 14,000 or 17,000 pounds. It hovered around 22,000 pounds with the guns included in 1941, then around 23,000-25,000 from 1942 onwards. I saw the report, I know this error is from the report and not from the video.
2- The B-25 did not beat the B-26 to combat, both flew antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific right after Pearl Harbor, and both had their USAAF combat debut on the same day: April 6th, 1942, when the 3rd BG's B-25s attacked Gasmata and the 22nd BG's B-26s attacked Rabaul.
I think he mistakenly compared the max continuous power of the b26 to the all out max speed of the b25. In reality the b26 was a near 340mph top speed at critical altitude 14,000 ish. And that was without getting the Wright engine and turbo to attain the speed (400+) the wings were designed for. Fumbled from the get go the b26 may have just been a bit too far ahead of the training and procedures with too much new tech. In the case of the P47 something like 15% of the 1st squadron trained on them was killed in accidents before it got to England. In many cases just repeating numbers in documents while very nice to have access to leaves out almost all of the context in which the numbers were attained as well as no reference to types of missions flown.
The 25 is such a blast to fly, a bomber that truly thinks it’s a fighter. Never flown in a 26 though, it’s on my list.
I thought I had read somewhere, years ago, of a B-25 claiming an air-to-air kill, but not from the usual defensive guns, rather by being flown offensively the way a fighter would be flown. Can't find any reference to it anywhere though.
Saw one at an airshow that started with a simulated carrier launch. What that plane did was crazy.
Good luck finding a B-26 still flying. The Army destroyed as many as they could once Germany surrendered and very few survived past 1948. Many of those that had were lend-leased away and written off once they were used up. A very few made it to private hands in any country and most frames that did are too corroded to ever fly again.
[9:18] I'd guess Pappy Gunn never got Air Vice Marshall Tanner's memo...
Very interesting. How about evaluation o these airplanes in the Pacific theatric.
Agree. Kenny had a different opinion of these aircraft as used in the SW Pacific theatre.
I do know the B-26 didn't do well in the Philippines in the early days of the war. Of course MacArthur having squandered a lot of them by clustering them together on the air field with the new M-3 Stuart tanks parked amongst them made them terribly easy pickings for the first Japanese air attacks. Only a few B-26 survived those early raids and once the bases were bombed, what then?
Another excellent video 🇭🇲👍
There was a pilot of a B-26 that retired at my hometown and he said the most nervous he was flying it was during the takeoff. It had a relatively fast takeoff speed and if you lost an engine the torque(?) from the one at full power would turn you off the runway. Fully loaded it was almost unsurvivable. I believe he told me B-26 but could have been an A-26.
The single engine take-off safety speed was very, very, critical. You must have a high enough airspeed (and thus, rudder authority) to overcome the tendency of the “working” engine not to pull, or yaw the plane towards the dead engine. The P-38, having engines that rotated outboard, had two “critical” engines; that is, the outboard portion of the down-going blade produced more thrust due to the increased angle of attack (asymmetric disc loading) and being so far out on the wing, the arm was a lot greater, so the single engine safety speed was also quite high for that plane. Every multi-engined aircraft has a vsse, if the airspeed is insufficient, along with a heavy load, pushing on the rudder to the stops will not stop a plane from falling off on a wing. That’s it in a nutshell.
Wow. Really demonstrates the capacity the US had. Interesting how the statistics so closely tracked the aircrews opinions.
Considering which bomber to use to take off from an aircraft carrier, for the Dolittle raid on Japan, the B-25 was chosen over the B-26.
IMHO Ibelieve the Martin B-26 to actually be a medium bomber while the NA B-25 to be more in the Attack aircraft category.
0:25 There was a video here about the effectiveness, combat losses of the B-17 vs. B-24, and turned out that the B-17 was better in every aspect (range, combat load, ruggedness, even price, cost) and still B-24 were built, and even built in much greater numbers. A simple question: Why?? About 1000 units more in 1943 and about 4000 units more in 1944! That's an amazing number! Was the B-24 a much easier, faster buildable aircraft than the B-17, maybe? If was, why the B-24 cost more? (As far as I know, the B-24 was significantly more expensive). Wouldn't be it more logic, to pay compensation to Consolidated, and ask them to build the B-17 rather? Or business and politics are more complicated than that (I think... this will be the answer as well).
They tried to create a higher performing new aerofoil giving high lift and semi laminar airflow but they tried just a bit too hard and the B-24’s Davis aerofoil turned out to be a dog. It was always too close to a stall and could not tolerate even minor icing. The B-17 had an early simple symmetrical aerofoil that was forgiving if not spectacular. With a bad aerofoil the long narrow wings still gave the B-24 good low speed endurance for maritime patrolling.
Wasn’t there one called the A20 too? Or Boston bomber?
The A 20 Havock.
The combat losses can't be compared directly, because they were often used differently. The B26 was more maneuverable and more rugged. So the B25 was better only when no one was shooting at you.
Great analysis 👍
A26 Invader was spiced just a year or two later and had them both beat. USAF kept flying that one in combat until the 1960s
@@Carlschwamberger1 Laos
Am I right in the fact there are no B-26s that survived. All were scrapped after the war?
Kermit Weeks has a B 26 that's airworthy at Fantasy Of Flight. Then there's Flakbait that's been preserved at the Smithsonian, in it's final combat condition, everything that is done to that airframe is done towards preservation not restoration there are still patched up bullet holes from combat that are visible, the paint is still original.
@@Ar1k1 Thanks for that. Great to know. Glad to know the B-26 didn't go the way of USS Enterprise CV-6.
There are several Marauders in museums around the US and France.
They are hot by modern standards, not suited for low hourly rate unprepared civilian pilots. One was lost due to slow emergency recovery techniques. Perhaps they are best grounded unless flown by very highly proficient pilots, say an airforce historic flight.
I have seen several places that the B-26 had the lowest loss rate of any bomber in the war. I now wonder if what I saw previous is true or is this video more accurate. Based on what is in this video, I can see why they got rid of the B-26 so quickly. My father piloted a B=26 for 65 missions in the ETO so I am always interested in any info I can get about the plane.
They were worn out. This up to 1943 assessment was a bit rubbish.
Looking at most aspects, the B-25 was very much an example of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ it carried a decent ordinance load. The B-26 doesn’t improve much on the B-25 in performance and bomb load
But it could take more shrapnel and bullet holes before falling out of the sky due to a more robust frame, which is why the 25s often got the soft missions while the 26s wer assigned to the suicidal ones.
just love those whispering motors
Love the vid.
Thanks!
The B26 alsosufferedfrom defective carburetors. The B26 figures are a complete puzzle to me.
All that was use in the ETO, what about in the Pacific? My impression is the B-25 was more heavily used in the pacific, and was more effective compared to heavy bombers (until the B-29 came along), but is that accurate?
It's plausible, simply because there were very few targets suitable for strategic bombing. Island bases were the only useful B-17 and B-24 targets, whereas B-25s and B-26s were great anti-shipping bombers.
Read John Bruning's "Indestructible". The inventors of low level bombing in the SW Pacific theater loved the 25 and hated the 26.
@@nomdeguerre7265 Thanks -- just ordered it.
My understanding is the B-26s that were in the Pacific and lost in the early days of the war were being replaced only by B-25s so that by the time the campaign was heavily underway there simply weren't that many B-26s left.
Often wondered how much performance increase the B25 would have had IF it had of gotten the later PW R2800 engine ??? The B25 got the Wright R2600 engine because it was AVAILABLE earlier than the R2800........yet the B25's performance seemed to equal the B26 and was easier to fly !!!
They tried that and at a air display it pulled it's wings off and crashed .
Equally, the B-26 was intended to have much more powerful engines and be about 80mph faster.
Medium bombers were misused. They should have concentrated on tactical targets like motor pools, tank parks, railroad yards, bridges, etc., and not on strategic ones like factories and oil fields.
The 9th AF in the ETO document applies exclusively to the B-26 - the 9th in the ETO didn't have any B-25s.
My uncle never talked about being a co-pilot on a B26. He was killed on his first mission. He died before I was born.
I declare to the Almighty Algorithm that this was a very interesting video. Mahalo for your meticulous research and Aloha!
B26 was by far the better looking aircraft
The loss rate to accidents being the plane and not pilot error I dont think takes in account that after this a certain point they had to increase the takeoff and landing speeds like you mentioned in the video. So its not pilot error but it's not the plane either(though they did blame it on the plane). It was bad training on the airframe.
Medium bombers SEEM less successful in the ETO, except for tactical support. MTO seems to have gotten good use out of their mediums. The Pacific theaters seem to be where the mediums shown, especially in SWPA. Kenny was fighting a much different war and they were often short of assets, so they made the best of what they had. The B25s were modified for ground strafing and got decent results. The B25 was also known as a "ship killer" using skip bombing against merchant shis. They didn't do as well against naval surface combatants. As the old saying goes "you don't go to war with what you want, you go to war with what you have". Only the USA had the luxury of building several models of competing medium bombers through the course of the war.
Paraphrased from an old World War II bomber pilot. The B-24 was a better plane in every regard. But everyone wanted to fly the B-17 because it always got you home.
The B-25 had the 12-50 cal nose version for strafing in the pacific. Even the 75mm cannon version. Otherwise they were so similar as bombers. Saw docs of B-26 pilots talking about how hard it could be to fly and the high landing to stall speed. It wasn’t a bad plane, but if we should have went with one or the other, the B-25 for the whole war was the way to go…
Great insights!
So, it was Heavier, More expensive, less reliable, more dangerous to fly, and less survivable than the B-25, and was neither faster nor able to carry larger bomb load. Not great stats.
Until 1943, yes.
The great stat is it had the lowest loss rate of any medium bomber in the war.
Yes, @2:15 They both started in 1941 with a 2,400 lb. bomb load and by 1945, both carry a 4,000 lb bomb load,
The B-26 "Marauder" was originally designed by Glen L Martin's Martin Aircraft Co, before the war, to use the huge Wright Cyclone engines later used on the B-29 bombers, which would have given the B-26 a 400 mph attack speed! But the engines weren't even close to ready, plus they would have been far too expensive for pre-war orders, so an aircraft that was designed for 2x 2,400 hp engines had to make do with 2 smaller 1,800 hp in engines in early B-26 production aircraft (later improved to 2,000 hp).
So instead Martin engineers used the next best thing - the P&W R-2800 "double Wasp" radial engine... which later would become famous for ruggedness and reliability, but in 1941 and 1942 were new AND PRONE TO developmental PROBLEMS... which means they FAILED OFTEN - and since the B-26 was one of THE FIRST aircraft to use them, many B-26s were lost when an engine failed! This horror of having an engine go out was worse on a B-26, with it's high wing loading and many inexperienced young pilots not knowing how to respond - so many aircraft were lost with all their crews.
Once the PW R-2800s were perfected, and B-26 pilots were WELL TRAINED to deal with ALL ENGINE-OUT emergencies (especially on takeoff), the aircraft losses were greatly reduced. In combat over Europe, the fast and rugged "mini-Fortresses" had the highest survivability statistics of all U.S. bombers, although this was partly because they did not penetrated as far in to enemy skies as the B-17 & B-25 heavies, so they were exposed to less Luftwaffe fighter attacks and less heavy enemy AA concentrations.
B-26s were very effective on D-Day, they wiped out the German positions ON "UTAH" BEACH, GREATLY REDUCING U.S. invasion casualties there, while over on "OMAHA" beach that sector had been assigned B-17 bombers... WHICH MISSED their targets entirely that morning... so OMAHA BEACH became a BLOOD BATH for attacking U.S. troops! B-26s didn't get the credit they deserved, for telling the story would show how the AAF _BOTCHED_ their assigned bombing of German guns and pillboxes on Omaha beach.
Swallow one narrow agenda video and you profess all encompassing judgemental wisdom? Congratulations.
Very good, well done.
*The "Sweetheart of the Skies" vs. ..... **_the "WIdow Maker"_*
Saw films of Doolittle flying it single engine, that man could fly!
All valid facts. But that 1:72 Airfix B25 with the 75mm howitzer in the nose ... that was the business. And the B26 model with all the .50 guns on the side of the plane, near the cockpit. Oh boy. Painted in DDay stripes, that was a real nice looking model. The things the Yanks did to their B25's for attacking barges off of New Guinea, that was nasty. And when the invasion started and McArthur said - shoot the swimmers, three days in a row, well, that was total war. Maybe a little pay back too.
Gregs auto and aircraft youtube has a whole video on the b26.
The original design was expecting a more powerful engine, higher speed - and that higher speed envelope determined thevwing design.
B26 manufacturing plant had a saboteuer. Was captured and delivery improved.
Prior to that the B26 had an earned reputation of a bomber a day on th bay.
Why the difference in man-hours to produce & final unit cost to the government between these 2 medium bombers? Was Martin’s B26 a more complex design to build or did North American have a better system for mass production? Possibly the answer is a little of both. Only the USA during WW2 could afford to produce 2 heavy bombers, 2 medium bombers and how many different fighter types.
🥺The Defense Industrial Complex strikes again .
Great & enlightening 😊
Then the A-26 light bomber, which was heavier, faster, and could carry a far greater weapons load than either of the medium bombers, supplanted both the B-25 and the B-26.
"not to be confused with the Doulas A 26 Invader" (Wikipedia)
This goes a long ways to explaining why B 25s work well in the Pacific. Much less AA. Far easier to attack a ship than a ground target ringed with AA. Also anti shipping work fit the medium well.
shouldve built more b-17s.
Uncle flew B26s and did okay keeping the landing speed up and the nose high on landing. Pilots crashed landing too slow.
As a rule of thumb, any plane called "The Widow Maker" should be flown with caution!. The B-26 was singled out by the Truman Committee report as an example of a defective product being delivered to the military due to its high loss and accident rate. Martin knew that making the wing larger would solve a lot of the problems with the B-26 but took no action until pretty much forced to.
Safer but more expensive and reduced performance. They erred a bit on the risk/reward balance when designing for newby pilots.
The Truman Committee was political theatre designed to increase the political profile of one Harry S Truman. The B-26 suffered from being rushed straight from the drawing board into production and then dropped into flight training system that didn't know how to deal with the engine out emergencies. That and faulty maintenance procedures that lead to frequent failures of the Curtis Electric props the B-26 was equipped with. It took alot of work to correct the real problems and its bad reputation but it turned out to be extremely successful when used as it was intended - medium altitude bombing.
Airplane that pushed past previous performance boundaries often required improved flying technique as well, but often airplanes were blamed as widowmakers simply because their pilots were not up to learning new techniques. Any pilot of a modern military aircraft or airliner would chuckle at the idea of the B-26 wing loading being a problem.
This comparison needs to get into the weeds with respect to differences in use. See John Bruning's "Indestructible" as well as other sources. Spaatz, Tedder and Doolittle apparently never met Kenny and Gunn.
my uncle was killed in Nov of 44, when the B-26 he was in crashed and burned on takeoff. my dad was just 2 months old
I often see other really interesting things in the tables and data you include and here's today's example:
(0:45) In the table...Medium bombers......B-25, ok....B-26, yeah....Wait, what the heck's a B-42?
I check Wikipedia and there it is....The Douglas Mixmaster.....Two contra-rotating pusher propellers on the extreme rear, behind the tail planes, on a medium bomber, with engines inside the fuselage, and defensive guns folded into the trailing edges of the wings...
Umm, wow. Ok...
The DH Mosquito was better than both of them. The same bombload, but 120 mph faster so very small loss rate. It also only needed 2 crew and yielded more accurate bombing.