whitehall
Diamond Member
Laura Hillenbrand's meticulously researched book "Unbroken" is the story of an American former Olympic runner Louie Zamparini's capture by the Japanese in WW2 and his endurance but it also gives insight to the relatively ignored bomber campaign in the Pacific. Most air crews longed for duty in the B-17 "Flying Fortress", a sleek, nimble fiercely armed and reliable war horse but many ended up in what they called the "flying coffin" B-24 "Consolidated Liberator" dubbed the "constipated lumberer. The blunt nosed B-24 was plagued with problems like leaky fuel lines and fuel gauges that suddenly showed empty at the most inopportune moments. The landing gear had no steering and it was almost comical to see a runway full of planes dodging one another on the ground as they tried to line up for takeoff. The conformation of the plane made it nearly impossible to ditch in the water with the bomb bay doors sticking out. The plane required a lot of strength to fly by pilots and it was described as "sitting on your front porch and flying your house". Yet when Zamporini's B-24 was shot up on a mission with no less than 596 holes the pilot managed to nurse it for five hours back to the base.