[ARC5] Lady Be Good - last

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 2 May 2011 at 10:56, Francesco Ledda wrote:

> All airplanes are dangerous, when it comes to water ditching. When
> ditching, most of the buoyancy comes from the fuels tanks (when
> empty). The B-24 has a high wing; even after a perfect ditching, the
> airplane compartment would end up below the water line, very quickly. 

Since this thread has become WAAAAAY off topic, this is the last thing I am 
going to post on it.

I was in Topeka, Kansas in 1978, at a small airshow. A B-24 was there which 
had belonged to the Indian Air Force. There was also a P-51, a P-47, a B-17 
(neither of which were flown) and the P-38, Lefty Gardner's White Lightning, 
among others.

I was amazed at how SMALL the B-24 was! With the P-51 sitting alongside 
it, the B-24 looked positively tiny. We were allowed to walk through it before 
its flight. Only a few people in it near the tail resulted in its tilting backwards 
on its two main-gear.

I kept thinking, "And THIS was one of our "heavy bombers"!!!!!!"

The P-38 was one of those very few which still had its original turbochargers 
installed and working. When it was warming up on the ground, there was 
dead silence from its engines. A ground-crew member told me that one had 
to be VERY careful not to walk into a prop. When Lefty made a couple of 
passes over the airfield, all one could hear was prop noise. It sounded kind 
of like a quiet vacuum cleaner.

Ken W7EKB