[ARC5] YB-40

[jcoward5452 at aol.com]

My guess would be that there was no liason capability. That would put just the command radios mounted to the compartment bulkhead. Everything else would have been removed to allow the installation of a powered turret. That would eliminate the Radioman and add a trained Gunner to the Crew.
 Just a thought/guess
 Jay KE6PPF


-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Eleazer <releazer at earthlink.net>
To: arc5 <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sun, Oct 23, 2011 3:03 pm
Subject: [ARC5] YB-40


Interesting thing about the YB-40 - relative to the "real" topic of this list - 
s that it had two top power turrets instead of one.  And the extra turret was 
ocated in the radio room. 
So where did they put the radios in the YB-40?  Or was the 2nd turret manned by 
he radio operator? I guess a logical place would have been the nose 
ompartment, 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 
iven its limited field of fire and I think that gun was deleted in the later 
ears.  Besides, the noise probably annoyed the radio operator, even if it gave 
im something to do during fighter attacks
The YB-40 also had a chin turret, later adopted on the B-17G, and two instead of 
ne gun in each of the side waist positions.
Originally the proposal was for the production B-40 to be powered by 4 Allison 
-1710 engines like the XB-38 instead of the 4 standard 4 R-1820's, which 
upposedly would have given it a performance advantage over the B-17 or at least 
omparable when carrying all those extra guns.  The XB-38, a converted B-17E, 
ad 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 
irectly to a USAAF fighter in Europe.  It was a conversation between the YB-40 
ilot and a captured P-38 flown by an Italian pilot.
Wayne
B5WSV       
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