[ARC5] YB-40

[Robert Eleazer]

Interesting thing about the YB-40 - relative to the "real" topic of this list - is that it had two top power turrets instead of one.  And the extra turret was located in the radio room. 

So where did they put the radios in the YB-40?  Or was the 2nd turret manned by the radio operator? I guess a logical place would have been the nose compartment, since there was no need for a bombardier.

The standard B-17E at first had a single .50 cal gun pointing upward through the "skylight" in the radio compartment.  It's hard to see how that did much good given its limited field of fire and I think that gun was deleted in the later years.  Besides, the noise probably annoyed the radio operator, even if it gave him something to do during fighter attacks

The YB-40 also had a chin turret, later adopted on the B-17G, and two instead of one gun in each of the side waist positions.

Originally the proposal was for the production B-40 to be powered by 4 Allison V-1710 engines like the XB-38 instead of the 4 standard 4 R-1820's, which supposedly would have given it a performance advantage over the B-17 or at least comparable when carrying all those extra guns.  The XB-38, a converted B-17E, had a top speed of something like 340 mph. 

A YB-40 figured in the only case I have read of in which an USAAF bomber talked directly to a USAAF fighter in Europe.  It was a conversation between the YB-40 pilot and a captured P-38 flown by an Italian pilot.

Wayne
WB5WSV