CONSOLIDATED B-24 LIBERATOR

WALTHAM AN 5743

THE CLOCK

The AN 5743 was designed for navigation and its purpose was to determine the time on an airplane with an endurance of 18 hours. Walthman built this machine up to 1945. Some had 9 jewels and others had 11. Both could be winded up for eight days.

The green numbers were not visible during the night, while the hands and the small marks in between the numbers are painted in a fluorescent color. In the USA Army every clock that followed these requirements is known as A-11

THE PLANE

The B-24, was initially built as a strategic bomber, but turned out to be one of the most useful planes ever built. It was used as general transport, antisubmarine fighting, tanker, long range reconnaissance, even Winston Churchill chose it as his personal transport during the war due to its long range. 18.188 were built and this plane was the most common in the allied team, not only for fighting, also for transport.

As the B-17s the B-24s was unable to defend itself in spite of fly in large groups of over 100 machines. It was very vulnerable against frontal attacks. Further more, it’s interior protection was insufficient. Both the cannon lever and the pilot were hurt by the shrapnel coming from the front of the airplane when it was hit. These problems where sorted out by the new versions, but until the help arrived (such as the P-38 Lightning and the P-51 Mustang), the planes suffered a great amount of losses and the missions was very limited.

The B-24 needs great skill to fly narrow formations over 20.000 feet, where it was usually used. Over this height, the airplane was unstable and would not allow any error from the pilot. For this reason, the training was much longer than the one for the B-17s and a selective skill level was required to fly Forts.

THE COCKPIT

What calls are attention the most is it’s narrow cockpit. It was difficult to accommodate yourself with the suit, the boots, the helmet (situated against the anti-aerial artillery), the Mae west (life vest) and the parachute. The pilots said that the narrowness of the cockpit was specially noticed during the evacuation in case of an emergency.

The instruments and controls were situated in a logic and efficient way. The place for the nose trim was at both sides of the seat, (that situation was adopted for most of transport plane till nowadays). This was very important in this plane it can take off with only using the nose trim, but much more important when making the plane less vulnerable against frontal attacks, a new front turret with a better weaponry and of course more heavy was installed, it made necessary an accurate use of the nose trim. The P-51 Mustang shared the same clock as you can see in the picture of the cockpit beside.

ATTACKING PLOETSI,  OPERATION TIDAL WAVE

On the first of August of 1943, the Forts attacked the petrol refinery in Ploetsi, Rumania. This refinery supplied two thirds of the fuel that the Germans used.

Five groups participated in the attack, 178 Liberators and approximately 1.700 men. The operation was based on an surprise attack at a very low height. The enemies expected the bombers at a higher level. This was the first and the last time that the bombers were used at such a low level.

The success of the attack depended on the surprise, and even more, on the climate. The climate was necessary for the navigation and for being able to find a route and not get spotted. This assured the success.

During the flight towards the target, the leading plane suffered an accident and the group broke up in three due to the bad weather. They had to climb to overfly some mountains and were spotted by the enemy´s radar. Finally, they found Ploetsi coming from the south instead of the northwest. The surprise factor was definitely loss, the German´s defense was strong than have been expected.

532 men never came back (100 were made prisoners), 41 planes were knocked down, 30 were destroyed and unable to be used again. Out of the 7 refineries, 1 was completely destroyed, 2 were disabled during months, 2 were damaged but continued working and the remaining 2 did not suffer anything at all.

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