In 1939, under a contract from the U, S, Army Air Forces, Consolidated Aircraft Corp. of San Diago designed a new heavy, long-range bomber, the B24. Its first flight was made in December of that year. Over the next six years, over 18,000 B-24s were built by Consolidated and under licence by Ford, making it the most produced military airplane in history. In addition to the USAAF the plane was in service with the U. S. Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Australian R.A.F..
With a wingspan of 33.5m (110ft) the B-24 had a range of
4,600km (2,800 miles), making it ideal for antisubmarine bombing in the mid-Atlantic. It had a bomb capacity of 3,630 kg (8,000
lbs) and was armed with 11 .50 calibre machine guns. The plane was manned by a
crew of 10: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator/bombardier, radio/radar operator, flight
engineer/top turret gunner, ball turret gunner, two side gunners and tail
turret gunner.
I chose to model the B-24D Strawberry Bitch, Serial Number 42-72843 mainly because the name was intriguing, but I was not able to find anything about the origin of the name. The plane flew over 50 combat missions between September 1943 and June 1944 with the 512th Bomb Squadron of the 376th Heavy bomber Group based at Cairo, Egypt.
#B-24 #bomber #WWII #USAAF #Strawberry_Bitch #Blender-4.1 #Cycles
