My name is A.J. Baime and I am new-ish to this chat group. I interviewed many B-24 crew members for a book I wrote (out in June) called The Arsenal of Democracy. But I didn't interview any B-17 crew members. I am interested in what people think on this eternal and important debate: Which was the better bomber?!
B 17 most defiantly not only are they more well known they have great story's, For more I recommend you check out this true awesome book, A Higher Call Although b 24 are also important too... Only not as.
I had the honor of being acquainted with a tremendous gentleman named John Sheffield (sadly he has since passed) who served as a waist gunner on a B-17 during the last two years of the war. He would acknowledge the greater range and load of the Liberator, but it could never be as dear to him as his Flying Fortress.
Which is better depends on how you define "better". For some missions each was clearly superior to the other.
B-24 is a later design and out performs the B-17 in just out about every area except one, I think. The B-17 economically cruised at a sligtly higher altitiude but the B-24 could get that high if it had to. Well, B-17 outdid it in another way too. It was the best looking bomber ever. I think it looks like a four engine fighter. Its crewmen said the B-24 looks like the box the B-17 was shipped in There are a lot of anecdotal stories about the B-17 being able to survive battle damage better than the B-24. Maybe they are true. They definately got more publiclity back home in the States but that had to do with the B-17 being based closer to London were the reporters were staying while the B-24 was based more to the north. So they got a lot of good pictures of damaged 'Forts'. Pilots said the B-17 was a joy to fly but the B-24 was not and required a lot of effort and constant corrections.
I happen to know a B-24 waist gunner - of course his opinion differs. I don't think you wil find any crewman who thought that the ship he flew in wasn't the best.
The B-24 loss rate in the ETO was actually slightly better than that of the B-17. The B-24 flew 226,775 sorties with 3,626 losses or 1.60% while the B-17 flew 291,508 sorties with 4,688 losses or 1.61%. A lot of the B-24's were based way to the south, i.e. Italy.
Good info. Thanks. And you are right of course about Italy Also the PTO, where their nose art was way more risque than in Europe where the reporters could see it and publish pictures of it for the folks back home. My dad's best friend was a B-24 pilot. He caught polio on his last leave before he was to go to Europe. Thankfully he made a full recovery and lived a robust life as a farmer after that. I never heard him talk about planes much except for the time he saw a restored B-24 at an airshow, which he enjoyed. I built a model of a B-24 for him when I was a little kid. Happy memories.
For me, this is one of the most fascinating pics of a B-24 I have seen—an amazing shot of a Liberator on Aug 1, 1943, Black Sunday, over Ploesti, Romania. Just sharing... The pic is free from the Library of Congress web site. I hope it works in this post!
Thank you for all these awesome replies. I adore Stephen Ambrose's The Wild Blue. That, along with all my other reading (I can go on forever on the books...) has led me to have a bias toward the Liberator. But I do believe that the B-24 and B-17 were equally amazing in different ways. The B-24 was certainly harder to fly! Read Lindbergh's diaries of his early test flights of the Ford-built Liberators... He compared flying the B-24 to learning how to fly all over again... so complicated it was like "learning to play a pipe organ."
That photo is not from the 1 August 43 TIDAL WAVE low-level mission, but is the 451st BG on 31 May 1944. The photo was taken by combat photographer Cpl. Robert Hoffman aboard PATSY JACK, 42-64445. The lead ship in the photo is CON JOB, 42-78145 flown by the Hubert Anderson crew. (info via Bob Karstensen, 451st BG) Attached is a photo from the 449th BG, 718th BS over Ploesti on the same day. The aircraft is either RACY TOMATO or Th' INHOOMIN CRITTER which were the only two NMF (natural metal finish) aircraft in the 718th's formation that day. Both aircraft were B-24G-NT so there are no distinguishing features in the photo to tell them apart.
Incredible!! And you're right of course. I rechecked the metadata on the photo. The photo I am trying to upload (definitely Aug 1, 1943) is too big of a file. The only one in my little B24 collection I can upload here is the Truman Committee at the Ford Willow Run bomber plant...
Specifically responding to "Son-of-a-Gunner" above, I looked back and I did in fact get the factual information CORRECT in the insert in my book coming out June 3. Here is the metadata from the source where I got it from (the Library of Congress): http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/89712239/
Based on first hand reports and memoirs that I have read, the B-17 handled much better than the B-24. The B-24's load out and range were far superior, but the B-17 was more agile, maneuverable and could better withstand multiple tours in heavy flak.
It's a standard engineering maxim that any advantage you get in one area, you compensate by having less of an advantage in another. The B-17 was very robust, but paid for that robustness with a lesser bomb load and range. The reverse is true with the B-24. Most of the reading I've done confirms the B-24's greater susceptibility to combat damage. An example would be the B-24's fuel "tanks" in the wings. The wings were hollow without any actual tank and the avgas was poured into the wing hollow! Often the gas would leak out into the bomb bay and necessitate the bomb bay doors being cracked a bit. This design feature allowed more fuel storage but increased the risk of fire. I noted with interest mcoffee's post on the relative loss rates of the two aircraft. For all practical purposes they were identical. As he noted most, but not all, European B-24s were in the 15th AF in Italy. The 15thAF had almost negligible fighter opposition compared to the 8thAF out of England. My Uncle Glenn was a B-24 flight engineer/top turret gunner with the 15thAF based out of Africa and Italy. He told me that fighter opposition was rare and then only by one or two individual fighters at a time. Their main opposition was from flak and he saw bombers go down from it on all sides of him at various times in his tour. His closest call is when his turret canopy was blown off by flak. His only harm being a scratch across his forehead!
Based on: http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/chapter9.htm It looks like the ratio of B-24s to B17's in 8th Air Force was ~3:4.
IIRC, that was roughly from the end of '43 thru late '44. Since the B-17 & B-24 were less than compatible in mixed company, the decision was made to convert the mixed 3rd Division to all Forts. By the beginning of '45, the ratio of Liberators to Forts was around 1:3.
The B-24s in the 15th AF were classified as MTO, not ETO. During the summer of '44 the number of B-24 vs B-17s in the 8th AF was close to parity. By January of '45 is was about 2:1 B-17s. See AAFSD table 89. MTO losses to fighters exceeded those to flak until July '44 when the majority of GAF fighters were withdrawn into the Reicht. Those flying before July saw plenty of fighter opposition. The wing tanks had self-sealing bladders. It was the mess of plumbing in the fuel transfer system that was the source of the persistant leaks.
