[ARC5] Lady Be Good - more.
Michael A. Bittner
mmab at cox.net
Tue May 3 21:14:17 EDT 2011
Water is very hard at 150 mph. Speaking as an old PBM flying boat pilot, I can tell you it's hard enough at 90 kts. Sand is interspersed with air which would make it softer, but I haven't conducted an engineering test to compare the two. Who has?
The skin of a B-24 is just as strong as any other WWII bomber.
Your wings would fold up too if a 500 lb bomb landed on them from a bomber above, which is what happened during the Ploesti raid.
Lacking a hull designed for water landings, I'll take a low-winger any day over a high-winger. The high-winger's fuselage is going to flood before it finally decides to float on its high wing.
Have we had enough of this thread already?
Mike, W6MAB
----- Original Message -----
From: J. Forster
To: Lenox Carruth
Cc: arc5 at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: [ARC5] Lady Be Good - more.
I'm no pilot but it seems that water and drifted sand are pretty similar
landing surfaces. (Water is hard at 150 MPH).
The main difference is planes don't usually sink far in sand. The main
danger on sand would seem to be be fire, but there was no fuel.
FWIW,
-John
==============
> It does.
>
> The ditching problem with the B-24 was with water landings. The roller
> bomb
> bay doors collapsed with the water pressure and quickly filled the aft
> fuselage with water sinking the plane. Although, the B-24 was equipped
> with
> two life rafts and a "Gibson Girl."
>
> Comparatively low horsepower? Compared with the B-17 that had four Wright
> 1820 1,200 horsepower engines, the B-24 had four Pratt & Whitney 1830
> 1,200
> horsepower engines.
>
> I would be willing to bet that the skin strength of the B-24 was no
> different than that of the B-17 or B-29.
>
> Note that the Lady Be Good survived the landing quite well even though it
> landed without anyone aboard!
>
> Lenox
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
> On
> Behalf Of jcoward5452 at aol.com
> Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 3:26 PM
> To: aaf-radio-1 at aafradio.org; Arc5 at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [ARC5] Lady Be Good - more.
>
>
>
> I thought the wing pased through the fuselage as one piece.
> Jay
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Hanz <aaf-radio-1 at aafradio.org>
> To: Arc5 <Arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Sun, May 1, 2011 2:14 pm
> Subject: Re: [ARC5] Lady Be Good - more.
>
>
> Anyone who has had a chance to touch the side of a B-24 or its PB4Y-*
> rethren know the fuselage is a *huge* mass with paper thin aluminum
> kin. Combine that lack of fuselage strength with comparatively low
> orsepower and a Davis wing that had very poor low speed characteristics
> nd was basically tacked onto the sides rather than having a central
> ing spar, and you had an uncomfortable feeling anytime you took one
> p. Yes, there are huge supporters of the aircraft who will cry foul
> ith such an assessment, but those who were skeptical its flyability in
> unusual" flight attitudes are probably in the majority. An old friend
> n B-29s actually refused a trip back to the states in one at war's end
> ecause of its reputation in the Pacific...and was relieved that he did
> o when the aircraft he was supposed to be on crashed on takeoff. Yup,
> nly a single data point, but it was evidently a common perception in
> he Pacific Theater.
> - Mike
> On 5/1/2011 3:09 PM, Michael A. Bittner wrote:
> "Was the B-24 so dangerous in a water landing that no one could have
> gotten
>
> ut of it?"
>
> A veteran of the Polesti raid was on the Military Channel the other
> night.
> He
> ndicated that the B-24 had very bad ditching characterisitcs.
>
> Mike, W6MAB
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kenneth G. Gordon
> To: Arc5 at mailman.qth.net
> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2011 11:59 AM
> Subject: [ARC5] Lady Be Good - more.
>
>
> One thing that has always bothered me about the LBG incident was why
> did
> they all bail out?
>
> Was the B-24 so dangerous in a water landing that no one could have
> gotten
> out of it?
>
> When found, three of the props were feathered, indicating, obviously,
> that
> they were very dangerously low on fuel.
>
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