CAF Diamond Lil B-24A Shutdown at Wings Over Dallas 2022
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- Close-up opportunity to see such a fantastic piece of history! Diamond Lil coming by for a bit of rest after taking a few paying passengers on a ride before the demonstrations took place at WoD '22. You can also see the CAF's P-51C Red Tail starting up in the background as well.
I love B-24s! I think they were the best bombers of WWII. They did everything from strategic bombing to anti-submarine warfare to long-distance transport to black ops missions like the Snooper missions in the Pacific (low-altitude radar-guided anti-shipping missions at night) and Carpetbagger missions in Europe (secret supply airdrops at night to arm rebels and spies parachute from them). B-24s were the first mass-produced warplanes designed for war (and not experimental) that could do transatlantic flight yet nobody ever talks about this!
It is cool that the only two airworthy B-24s are a B-24A (Diamond Lil), which served mainly as a transport and test B-24 that served stateside during WWII and never was incorporated into the U.S. military (it stayed with Consolidated), and a B-24J (Witchcraft), which was an actual WWII combat heavy bomber that fired guns and bombs in anger that served in the Royal Air Force in India, Burma, and Malaya. The British abandoned a bunch of B-24s in India after the war and tried to destroy them to make the new Indian nation unable to use them ever again but Indian engineers jerry-rigged them and actually returned 36 abandoned B-24s back to service and they served for 20 more years. Witchcraft was one of those Indian Air Force B-24s!
Also, contrary to the B-17 propaganda machine's attempts to always disrespect B-24s and their crewmen, new B-24s were actually being built after the war and served until 1954 in the U.S. Navy and 1958 in the U.S. Coast Guard! That plane is called the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer and these were actually next-gen modernized B-24s. The USAAF and Consolidated made plans to make single-tail and modified B-24s to survive post-WWII and continue to serve but they cancelled all USAAF B-24s in May 1945. The variant for the USAAF with single-tails and the exact same features and looks as the USN Privateer was called B-24N and they were going to build 5,000 of them if the war had continued. The war ended and the USAAF were excited about B-29s and retired all their versions of B-17s and B-24s overnight. B-17s were still used in the U.S. Navy until the 1950s but these were all built before July 1945 and not as numerous as the 739 B-24 U.S. Navy Privateer variants that were brand new and continued to be built after the war. There are only 8 Privateers still around and 7 of them are museum pieces, so these can be added to the surviving B-24 family numbers which is usually given as 13 B-24s that have survived. There is one single Privateer that is airworthy but it has not been renovated back to 1940s or 1950s military service and it still looks like how it looked when it served as a civilian water bomb firefighter plane until 2002.
That being said, RIP to the aircrew of Texas Raiders and the P-63. I love B-17s too but B-24s are better. Those full-sized manned turrets on B-24s like "Witchcraft" were incredible! Diamond Lil was modified back to its original B-24A duties which was merely being a transport aircraft with two light machine guns. It even has an old Air Transport Command logo showing that it was never a combat aircraft, which is the truth, historically.
very nice! It's a really fantastic piece of aviation's history 😎
NICE VIDEO.
YaHaa a new one.