Son of D-Day Marauder Group Leader reports for duty

I asked a trick question. What is the best WW2 medium bomber. Though it can't take off from a carrier, the best WW2 Medium Bomber is the Marauder. That's by dint of it's presence and performance. I don't know what a Ju88 is. The Betty is probably better built. The Arador is interesting. The B-25 is truckier. 17 & 24's are 'heavy'. The Invader (there was a shortage of numbers, so that's the Other B-26) is soulless

 

Welcome aboard...

 

Cheers and Welcome to the Forums!

 

...welcome and great pics

 

I guess aircrew will have a preference for the aircraft that enabled them to survive the war. B26 had a poor safety reputation - supported by the figures for accidents and fatalities in training in the USA. There are quite a few fB25s still flying - unlike the B26.

The B25 and B26 seem to have been interchangeable. The USAAF deployed mainly the B25 in the MTO and PTO and the B26 in the ETO - while the RAF used theior lease lend B25s in NW Europe and the B26s in the Mediterranean.


The D day performance by the group that bombed the defences of Utah Beach (W5) carried out the most effetcive part of the D Day aerial bombardment. There is a B26 and a great exhibition at the Utah beach centre.

 

welcome

 

I hope i can do this in the right spot
Thank you for your informed and carefully considered comment.
I guess that all eight ETO B-26 groups were assigned to Utah Beach. Hard to say if the same treatment would have cut the thousands of casulties of Omaha Beach, but probably.
My Dad Robert M McLeod was CO of the 596thBS of the 397thBG which was assigned three targets on Utah. Interestingly, i recently uncovered details of the target locations.
The 397th Bomb Group, who only began combat 20Apr44, launched 54 Marauders on its first D-Day mission consisting of three echelons of 17, each commanded by 23Mar40 graduates of Flying Class of 40-A, McLeod, Berkencamp and Allen. They coined it was the 40-A Armada. In Marauder 'Dee-Feater', tail #296142, McLeod was mission commander and leader of the second echelon to take off. They formed up over their Rivenhall base, reached the Channel, and separated toward the three targets. They unloaded on these three Utah tsrgets at or before 0625.
Why the 11Jul44 color photo of 'Dee-Feater' in fading Invasion Stripes is available as a poster at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum is another nice story for one day

I attended the Doolittle Reunion near Fresno, Calif, around 2003 where eleven B-25's flew. I heard that in addition to being less tricky to fly, the presence of so many B-25's was because many B-25's were collected & refurbished to fly in the movie, "Tora, Tora". Was that in the 1960's?

The Rodney Dangerfield of military aircraft. Cancelled and blasphemed. Then banished and stripped. The old vet walked up to the B-26 sticker on my Dad's Ford Ranger and said "I flew those.", but he meant Douglas Invader. Why has that happened? Why the exorcism?
'Flak-Bait' was the only one that seems to have been intentionally saved. It was protected at the Southern Germany scrap yard while the rest were chopped up to make Volkswagene.before being flown to Rotterdam to be disassembled and shipped to the Smithsonian where its nose was the only piece of a WW2 medium bomber on display until it was gathered up for s slow reassembly.
The Marauder in the Normandy greenhouse was provided by the French Air Force at the urging, contribution and gathering of assistance by the recent Lieutenant Governor.of Texas, who lost the Texas Senate race to Ted Cruz, whose name slips my mind, painted in the colors and livery of his Bomb Squadron Commander Father who died in a Texas traffic accident when he was 2 years old, or to that effect.
The one in the Nat'l Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton. Ohio, was also Ex-French AF. I think the flyable non-flying one in Florida, the display one in Akron and the project in Tucson were salvaged from the 'million-dollar' valley in British Colombia.

A cutting-edge aircraft that looked so good at a desperate time it was ordered right off the drawing board. Its first problem was the heavy twin-50 Martin top-turret was late and unavailable which made early Marauders out of weight balance and caused nose-gear failures for the unaware.
My Dad said one had to babysit the battery(s) before take-off by isolating it from any excess draw. That was a cause (i do not know if only) of the electrically-controlled pitch propellers to going flat and causing overspeed props and loss of thrust. And a dunk in the bay.
Doolittle visited training bases to chop an engine at take-off and circle the base on one engine to shore up morale.
They say the Marauder had the lowest loss rate of Allied aircraft or at least American. Of course, the type of use affects aircraft survival. The 22nd BG in the Pacific consumed its Marauders in nine months before converting to The solo 70th Bomb Squadron went from 13 to two Maraudes in 18 months flying from Fiji and Guadalcanal, and being the only one there to cause a tide-turning moment, before they converter to B-25's.
All the best to you, Stan
R S McLeod. Orangevale, Calif 95662

 

P.S.: The 22nd BG converted to B-24's after nine months of Pacific combat.

F S Allen, (later in the 397th BG) experimented in Austrailis w/ torpedoes dropped from the leftover Marauders after conversion. After returning home Allen reported his findings to G L Martin Aircraft Marauder design team leader Peyton Magruder.
That would later be key to the color Smithsonian B-26 poster. On 11Jul44 Peyton Magruder would visit Rivenhall to see his baby in action while accompanied by photographer C E Brown using color film

The USNavy Shanghai'd four of the 70th BS and 22nd BG Army Marauders passing by on their way to Austrailia, and armed them w/ a torpedo to go against the Japanese fleet from Midway Island 4Jun42. Their selfless fearlessness caused the Japanese Admiral to make a costly armament decision

 

Welcome to the forum. Rich A. in Pa.