B-24 versus B-17

Today I received a copy of the 2006 book: The American Aircraft Factory in World War II by Bill Yenne.  Since I am not very knowledgeable about other manufacturing sites, I thought this would aid in comparing Martin, Douglas, North American and, most especially, Boeing to Ford Willow Run (FO WR).  The photographs of the people and facilities, especially the colored photos, are exceptional!  However, one of the most unique, largest and true "assembly line" plants, FO WR, has many references, some stats and only one photo (p. 152).  I was surprised!  The book itself is especially interesting as it shows many photos of "Rosies."  Without a doubt for the heavy bombers, Boeing was the focal point.  Although I am unabashedly prejudice, the book still is great for making comparisons.   Steven

Just tacking on this link I recently wrote referencing FO WR from another thread.   Steven
http://forum.armyairforces.com/m_129294/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#129294

The B-24 was hydraulic with ONLY one engine driven hydraulic pump on the No 3 engine...in the event the No 3 engine was shutdown, there was no hydraulic pump to operate the brakes....to solve this, an electric motor driven pump was installed in the bomb bay...where due to a quirk in the fuel system on the early B-24s, mostly leaked and therefore the bomb bay doors had to cracked open on takeoff and landing....the electric motor sparked when operated, and if fuel fumes were present, caused an explosion.

I'm new at this-- reading thru this thread- 1st thing I thot of was a quote from a letter my dad wrote (my mother) from Jan43 at Smokey Hill Salina KS:
"Tonite I say a B-24 burst into flame 50 ft off the ground on takeoff & crash. A terrible sight -common on B-24's (7th time from this field) the awful black smoke that drifted off...."  the 99th was B17 and this probably expresses bias against the B-24 as well as skuttlebutt about the accident rate and causes of previous accidents.

H. Shields :
 
To say the 99th was B-17 and therefore there was bias against the B-24. is misleading, in my opinion...
 
I stated facts, after contact with several persons who have experience with both....this is a true fact, that the B-24 only had ONE engine driven hydraulic punp...it is not so much bias, as it is a fact.
 
It was  bad engineering on the part of Consolidated engineers.
 
From an engineering standpoint, what is needed is redundancy....damage from enemy action in the B-24 was almost certain to result in a hydraulic leak, which in itself is hazardous, as hydraulic fluid will burn.
 
One engine driven hydraulic pump does NOT equal redundancy.
 
A second example is the use of two parallel glass tubes for fuel quanitity indication....the B-17 as well as the B-25 and other aircraft used the float operated fuel quantity system where EACH seperate fuel tank had it's own system...a small sending unit which then was transmitted to the cockpit...this system is similar to the fuel gauge used in automobiles and trucks.
 
What I have a problem understanding, is why the glass tubes were used, when the B-17 that was developed in the 1934-1935 time range, (some 5 years prior to the design of the B-24) used the common to the auto industry, fuel quantity indicating system, and the Consolidated engineers did not also use the tried and true auto type.
 
One reason I can confidently state this, is that when a new wing fuel tank quantity indicating sending unit was needed, on Sentimental Journey the B-17G operated by the AZ Wing of the CAF, it was found that the B-25 used the same unit.....(I was the Parts Procurement Officer for the AZ Wing from 1978-1991).
 
Jim :-)

Hugh,
 
I was in the 348th sqdn, I knew your dad. We attended some reunions at the same time.
Our next reunion will be at Savannah,GA Oct4-8th.If you attend you might find 347ers who knew your dad. If interested contact Gary Staffo gstaffo@gis.org

What I have a problem understanding, is why the glass tubes were used, when the B-17 that was developed in the 1934-1935 time range, (some 5 years prior to the design of the B-24) used the common to the auto industry, fuel quantity indicating system, and the Consolidated engineers did not also use the tried and true auto type

 
Jim,  Good evening!  I just reread parts of  this thread and noticed your latest post.  Being a GM Truck Assembly/manufacturing Transmission person at present day WR, I'm curious as to why you feel /believe Consolidated lagged behind Boeing in this design?  It would seem, and this is only a WAG, that with the number of continuous engineering changes in the B-24's that at least the WR FO engineers would have stepped forward and proposed a design change to Consolidated. I realize, however, that all changes and engineering blocks would have comed through Consolidated, and maybe it was all a matter of "timing."  Just some random thoughts this evening.   Best Regards!   Steven

Steve...I pointed out that the B-25 used the same fuel indicating system as the B-17, which again was the automotive type.
 
A problem with the glass tubes was that if they were hit by a flak fragment, the fuel quantity was then unknown.
 
Also the installation of only one engine driven hydraulic pump on No 3 engine...when No 3 had to be shutdown, there was no way to get hydraulic pressure except to use the bomb bay installed auxiliary pump, with it's arcing and sparking motor, in the presence of fuel fumes.
 
To add to all the above, it seemed to me that better engineering could have solved the weak nose gear, as there were other nose wheel aircraft that did not have that problem.
 
As to making design changes to major parts of the B-24, I am sure that any changes would have had to be proved to be suitable for Consoldiated to agree, and then the fact that all five assembly plants would have been required to change as well....I suspect that it was too big a problem to the Consolidated engineers.
 
Just about every description of the B-24 makes a point of saying that the B-24 flew higher...the Davis Wing
was not capable of generating enougn lift at the slow WW II airspeeds....when the airspeed was increased in the jet age, the Davis Wing finally came into it's own...the B-29 had a modified Davis Wing, and the B-29  Service ceiling was below that of the B-17, (some 33,000 ft against the B-17's 35,600 ft).
 
The Davis wing required a higher airspeed that was not available to the WW II aircraft.
 
Consolidated made an advance in the Davis Wing, but the advance was offset by the other items that needed to also be improved, and later were...but it took the jet age to finally realize it's full capabilities. 
 
Keep in mind that the current crop of jet airliners have leading edge slots and slats, with the traling edge flaps extending the  total surface to equal the WW II B-17 wing, for landing and takeoff, after which the added devices retract, and the Davis Wing functions as it was designed to do.
 
I think the Consolidated Engineers were innovative, but they had a long way to go...it has taken some 40 years of continuing development to arrive at today's version of the Davis Wing.
 
Jim :-)

As to making design changes to major parts of the B-24, I am sure that any changes would have had to be proved to be suitable for Consoldiated to agree, and then the fact that all five assembly plants would have been required to change as well....I suspect that it was too big a problem to the Consolidated engineers.

Jim,    Again, thank you!  I've taken some time this evening to reread some parts of Bejamin Kidder's book on the construction of FO WR and the automotive-assembly-line-concept transposed to the aircraft industry.  I focused on the almost astronomical # of engineering changes.  Since these had to go through "an approval process" with the Consolidated Engineers, and with the 5 manufacturing facilities, your opinion makes sense.  (Let me tell you what it is like even today.   An engineering change, i.e., small component change <nothing major> on, let's say, the military H-1: HumVee, for which I am responsible for its final transmission assembly at GM WR, MAY take weeks, if not longer!)  I would be interested in hearing from Ken Alexander, Al Blue or any Site manufacturing folks on this.  The most numerous changes at FO WR were in the areas of: armor plating, nose armament, tail armament, instrumentation and structural modifications to support these afore-mentioned changes.  All in all, it took time and processing, although at the "manufacturing floor levels," things moved rather quickly.    Steven

Steven...Another point...when I worked at Boeing....I was enlightened as to the process within the Engineering section.

When a change was contemplated by an airline....it was submitted to a "change Board"....where all invovled met to discuss the change.  I recall, that when there was a "lead' time of several weeks to a month in getting the vendor supplying a part, to get the part to the Receiving Dock..then the part had to go through Quality inspection to make sure the part met the blueprint specs. When all agreed, it might be several aircraft down the assembly line. before the change could be accomplished.

In addition, the Engineering drawings had to be brought up to date, with the change for that airline.

Boeing, when it came to a new airplane...take the new 787 as an example....the FIRST airline that buys the 787, ....it, no longer is Boeing...it becomes that airline's aircraft, with all that airline's specs.
When a new customer also buys a 787, where the numbering system of the Engineering Drawing, is all numbers, the new customer has an "A" suffix added to the Drawing, when the next new customer, wants someing different from either the original customer, and the second customer, it's drawings get a "B" suffix.
At the mfg level, when a part is mfg for customer "B" then the specs and drawings reflect that airlines specs.
An example would be in the radios....the original customer requested Collins radios...the second customer requested Bendix,then the drawing number for the original customer would have straight numbers, the second customer would have a "A" sufffix, etc.
Each time, the respective drawings would have to have the Engineering Group bring the Drawings up to date, so that the correct customer's drawings could be used to mfg the part.

When it came to "spares" the tooling jigs were stored at Kent Washington with the main plant at Renton, WA, some 20-30 miles from the assembly at Renton.

The Shop where the part was mfg, had to have the current tooling jigs set aside, and the spares tooling installed  (temporarily), the necessary parts mfg, and the tooling jigs then returned to the storage area, and the current tooling and jigs reinstalled.  

After my brother related that his TWA 707 came back from Europe, it had an EL AL rudder with the EL AL paint.

A person at Boeing, was wondering why one airline ordered nothing but rudders, another ordered nothing but landing flaps, etc. My brother explained that each of the airlines operating the same aircraft, would store certain parts, and when one of the participating airlines needed a part, it was available, ( In Europe),
and each airline, thus was not required to each store parts for an entire aircraft.

I hope this explains some of the problems and how some were solved, at Boeing.

Jim :-)

Gentlemen,  Just picked up the most recent edition of Flight Journal (October 2007) in which there is a brief article on page 82 entitled "B-17 vs. B-24" by Barrett Tillman.  Does this sound vaguely familiar?  We all know the good natured "give and take," but the bottom line, which has appeared over and over in this thread, is the last line of this article: "Any combat airman will tell you that his favorite airplane is the one that brought him home."   We salute all the Vets!  The article includes a nice  shot of the CAF's B-17 and B-24.    Steven

Steven:

I'm not sure I can add anything to the fuel gauge discussion. I know my father says it was a useless piece of crap that never worked properly and he never relied on it. In fact he had missions where the gauges said they had plenty of fuel and the tanks were almost dry and visa versa. Instead he would estimate fuel load, time in flight power settings, etc. to give him an idea of fuel left. Said dad: "It wasn't accurate, but better than the gauges."

The fuel system and the gauges in particular were always a weak point on the Lib. Gas leaked at the fittings at the fuel cells and especially from the rubber hoses they used to connect the pumps and carburetors. The wings would always have fuel sloshing around in them from leaks. Why it was never addressed in manufacturing I don't know. With all of the running changes made to the design and production during the life of the B-24 it seems odd to me that it wasn't changed. But, not being an engineer, I can't speak to the difficulty of revising a fuel system and the gauges, pumps. lines, etc.

Perhaps it was deemed not serious enough to warrant slowing down production to implement a major change like that?

I do know the Collings people totally reworked the fuel and hydraulic lines on their B-24. The chief pilot was telling me that the original lines were oval and not round. The original system leaked and the smell of av gas was ever present in the original planes. In Witchcraft, if they smell fuel at any time, they go over the system carefully to find out why.

My guess is that Consolidated made use of existing systems from their flying boats because they were proven and time was short to finalize the design of the Liberator. At some point in the design process, the design is frozen and the company goes with what they have at that point. Otherwise, they would be fiddling with the project forever and nothing would go into production. I strongly suspect this happened with the Lib. They went with what they had to meet their deadlines. And it never got changed because other revisions were deemed more important.

Ditto the hydraulic pump in only the number 3 engine.

Again, I'm speculating and have nothing tangible that support my thoughts.

I'd be interested to hear if Consolidated revised the fueling and hydraulic systems in the design of the B-32 Dominator.

Ken

BTW, per William Carigan in "Ad-Lib: Flying the B-24 During WWII", during a forced Landing SOP was:

Have the flight engineer turn off the fuel sight-gauge valves and wing-compartment drain-line valves located in the forward bomb bay compartment on the lower wing surface near the booster pumps.

If number 3 engine wasn't operating, use the auxiliary hydraulic pump to lower gear and flaps and charge the brake accumulators. Then turn it off before the plane makes contact, to reduce fire hazard in case the wing tanks are fractured and leak fuel into the bomb bay. The aux. hydraulic pump had an open-brush motor—and brushes spark.

Here is what my father wrote about the fuel system during an emergency landing on Vis with a shot up plane and a frozen prop on No. 3 engine in flat pitch:

"...The fuel system left a lot to be desired. Bill Kassey, our engineer, could not accurately determine the amount of gasoline remaining. Even though we had been using only three engines for the last three hours, we had been under full power the whole flight. This, plus the fact that it was not time for our squadron to be landing back at our home base, indicated to us that we couldn't have much fuel left. ..."

His ball gunner, Don Askerman wrote about another emergency:

"... On the way back [from Blechhammer, Germany] Kassey told Alex he was going to transfer fuel. This requires Bill {Kassey] to come back to the waist and open/close some valves up on the platform above the back end of the bomb bays. While doing so, all four engines quit! Alex lowered the nose to keep flying speed, but was dumbfounded. [Understatement, says dad.] Kassey rushed back to the flight deck and noticed the "0" fuel pressure reading. He flipped on the electric fuel pumps and the four engines roared to life. Alex didn't want to chance crossing the Adriatic with a questionable fuel system, so we landed on the Yugoslavian island of Vis..."

Ken

Ken,   Good evening and thanks!  Very informative, and, after having read what your father experienced, you just wonder how these young aviaors made everything work! A peer of mine at GM WR, albeit a peg higher, was a naval aviator flying Tomcats post Vietnam, obviously.  He is our Plant Quality Manager and stresses continually to everyone: Trust your gauges!  He is fanatical on this in manufacturing, and he constantly relates unbelievable stories about night landings in rough seas  on carriers.  I try to envision, the WWII aviators (kids becoming men) flying these A/C's with what we would call acceptable gauges.  I have the utmost respect for these Vets!  Your father must have been quite a pilot!!!  I gather this not only from your narratives, ut also the comments I see dispersed around this WebSite!  Steven

O.K., you got my curiousity up now. Can you tell one of those incredible landings in horrible condtions in the middle of the night on a rolling carrier stories?

He is our Plant Quality Manager and stresses continually to everyone: Trust your gauges! He is fanatical on this in manufacturing, and he constantly relates unbelievable stories about night landings in rough seas on carriers.

John,   Maybe the underlined part of the quote may have been a "bit of exaggeration" in the post.  The point I was trying to make was on the use of gauges and instruments along with their calibration and maintenance.  My peer would relate how important this was while landing in poor weather on land, but then how much more difficult it was for a carrier landing.  He flew different types of A/C, but was not too specific.  Also his father was a B-24 pilot in WWII as well as flying B-17's, but, according to my peer, his dad is very reticent about everything. I've printed hard copies of this and some other threads for him to read.  I know this may have been a meandering from your question, but I believe that earlier post may have been too over-stated; I shall watch that.   Steven

Aside from all the engineering talk, I'll repeat what I said before. I loved to see B24s flying with us on misssions because if we were attacked by enemy fighters they only went after the B24s and stayed away from the B17s.
But as Steven said ---- the plane that brought you back was the best plane

I'm not sure I can add anything to the fuel gauge discussion. I know my father says it was a useless piece of crap that never worked properly and he never relied on it. In fact he had missions where the gauges said they had plenty of fuel and the tanks were almost dry and visa versa. Instead he would estimate fuel load, time in flight power settings, etc. to give him an idea of fuel left. Said dad: "It wasn't accurate, but better than the gauges."
The fuel system and the gauges in particular were always a weak point on the Lib.

 
Ken, Jim, Jules and Others,  The back-and-forth sparing continues, and Jules' comment was certainly an interesting "take" on the Lib as a defensive decoy.  As to the "fuel gauge controversy" and to whether it was timing, cost, or the proverbial "present method adequate," we shall never know.  Interesting though, is the fact that in many writings, there are always references to the Lib's "fuel gauge problems" exactly as Ken's father describes.  I quote from a passage in A.B. Feuer's book: The B-24 in China, p. 125, from his mission log 03JA45 where Capt. Haynes was on a Recon Patrol loaded with 3400 gallons of AF aboard his LAB A/C.  "We were 600 miles out (ChengKung to the  China Sea) when the #3 engine sputtered and quit...."  "While going through the checking procedure, the fuel gauges showed that we barely had enough gas to make it home.  I did not see how we could have used up so much gasoline unless we had a bad  leak somewhere.  There was no evidence to indicate a break in the lines.  My only choice was to abort the mission.  I notified the navigator to plot a straight-shot course to Chengkung.  The more I studied the gas gauges, the less sure I was that we would make it home.  I leaned all four engines back as much as possible, and with a lot of sweat and tears, we landed safely.  The ground crew checked the /AC and informed me that there was still 700 gallons of gasoline in the tanks!  The fuel gauges were giving a faulty reading.  I told the guys at operations that this was not the first time I had trouble with those damn gauges!"  When I read these accounts and hear the first hand comments of Vets, I always wonder why something wasn't done engineering-wise early on.  I believe Jim Peters may have hit the nail on the head in post #47 of this thread.  Thanks for reading!      Steven
 

quoting A.Scott Berg-Lindberg p.471-- Lindberg's greater frustration came in seeing Ford mass-producing planes that werre inferior to those they should have been producing, simply because it would be too costly to retool the factories. "I feel quit sure that Ford officers did not realize the mediocrity of the B-24 when they set up such elaborate jigs and machinery for its production," Lindbergh would later tell a Ford Company historian. "However, even if they had shared my personal estimate of the B-24, I am sure they would have made any change in their procedure-- or that they should have. A very high production of bombers was desired at the earliest possible date... "
"On Sep 22, '42, L. and a half-dozen colleagues from Ford flew to Rochester, MN -- in one of the company's B-24 "clunkers," which sprang a near-fatal gasoline leak along the way."

(he went to Mayo's to work on altitude chamber physiology) this is before his more illustrious career in fighter planes in the South Pacific

we use the saying around our mfgrg office in the sub-mgtmt levels: you want it fast, you want it cheap, or you want it right-- pick which 2 you want.

I am reminded of a Kelly Johnson quote to the effect that a committee never designed an airplane that was an utter failure, but a committee never designed an outstanding airplane, either. Maybe the B-24 was a committee design.

OPPS--ABOVE QUOTE SHOULD READ--
I am NOT sure they would have made any change....
(helps clear up the meaning some-- sorry about the error)

Hugh,   WELCOME ABOARD!  Thanks for the post!   You have re-iterated, as a neophyte to the Website, some of the same sentiments uttered by myself, Ken, Jim and Jules most recently in this thread.  For your information, Charles Lindberg was a "regular fixture" at FO WR.  He functioned not only as a true "test pilot," but also as a "Confidant" to the Ford Engineers.  His expertise was invaluable, and he held considerable "sway," but the fact of the matter is (was):  it was a business!  Your quote was very appropriate, and, in fact, early on, when production actually began "full tilt" other than KD's, it fell far behind expectations of both Consolidated and the AAF.  To this point, the "ever-ready media" jumped on board with its now famous nickname "Willit Run."  As you have expressed, it was more than just the engineers involved. but rather, the system.  Yes, all said and done, the "story line" for this thread seems to have drawn the same conclusions, and that is "the best A/C is the one that got you home."     Steven