Not too many women flew the B-26 Marauder. However some did, I actually have a picture of some of them in this video. Let us know if one of them is your mom.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles "not many women flew B-26" that's why we can pinpoint who that person is, where he lives and his social security number 😂

Could have been a WASP flying the planes from the factory to the ships

Perhaps it's a two dad family? Either way a cool tidbit!

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Frame 46:10, she is on the far left. Based at Harlingen TX, towed targets over the Gulf of Mexico for B 24 gunners.

Thanks for the great story. God bless the memory of your granddad. The Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis were some tough cookies. Many brave and admirable stories out there supporting that. Cheers from the SE USA.

Thanks for your comment. I think your dad was right. The B-26 just doesn't get the recognition it deserved.

It's just what's called "survivor's bias". Any plane that made it to the end is the most fantastic plane eveeer. The reality is the B-26 had an absolutely terrible reputation and it was retired as quickly as possible.

Respect to your father.

​@@k9killer221 did you not watch the video?

​@@k9killer221the B26 was a fantastic aircraft that had a rough start

Merlin gets it.

nader is coming for those b-26s next watch out

Damn Corvajrs...... Ralph got it

Um,, a Corvair isn’t a muscle car… Unless you stuff an LS init.

@@michaelgarrow3239 go look up Ralph Nader and the Corvair.

Come to the darkside, war thunder has a couple variants of it. Fun plane.

@@kiwidiesel NGL it's fucking dogshit in war thunder. In game it's very slow and like most bombers is just a free kill for any fighter that gets within 5 miles of it.

War Thunder just added it for what it's worth. I do Sim VR in both games so I'm looking forward to taking it out.

@@kyle857 The update that added the b-26 came out just over a year ago......

​​@@harrymack3565 all American bombers are nerfed to almost uselessness in WT. They had to Nerf and up tier them many times for"game play" because fighters whined for years. Back when a B25 could pull more than 2g before snapping the wings they were fun.

Thanks Will. It's good to be back.

I always thought the B-26 LOOKED like it should be able to go 400mph...sleekest looking bomber of the war(the skinny-fuselage German bombers notwithstanding)...

I would have broken those wires too whenever needed. The engines don't do you any good if you don't have a plane and crew to use them.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Sadly the WW2 pilot who told me some of his experiences is no longer with us. I told him that his exploits should be put into a book, but he was a rather humble guy and it was only after a few private conversations and questions from myself that he would open up a bit. His experiences should have been somehow recorded but sadly like many others are now lost.

"Vaginabomber"?..did they really name a plane that?....

@@dyer2cycle Vagabomber, yes. A play on Vagabond.

Thanks Jim.

"one a day in Tampa bay!"

Like the B-47 the performance jump needed hard lessons in training.

Dad flew 50 B-26 missions out of Corsica, Sardinia…over Italy and Munich. Crash landed after flak damage on a British 20:09 Spitfire field in Italy. Went off the end of the runway at over 100 MPH. Flipped over on its back. Brits cut them out with one crew with broken arm…all survived. Last mission, his tail gunner hit and damaged a ME262 over Munich. Rarely spoke of his wartime experience until his early 90’s.

YEAH, Martin Murderer ...judge the rest

Any plane that gets a reputation of killing it's own aircrew is going to be unpopular. Helldiver, Barracuda, F7 Cutlass, etc....

@@treyhelms5282 It actually had the lowest attrition rate of any bomber of WW2. 0.6% which is the same as the Mosquito. The accident rate got down to a problem with ground technicians discharging the aircraft battery during test procedures leaving the electric propellors to feather due to lack of power on takeoff and crew training. If there is an engine failure on takeoff it must be immediately recognised, the failed engine feather etc.

@@williamzk9083 There were many problems with the B26, which is why it was a bad aircraft. The lower loss rate has everything to do with the fall of the Luftwaffe, and that the B26 was given easier missions. When the B26 encountered heavy opposition, it was slaughtered. Not to mention the high accident rate. It's telling that the servicemen preferred the B-25 and the A20.

@@treyhelms5282 the B26 problems were quickly fixed. The increased wing area to cure what was essentially a training problem cut 40 mph of the speed rendering it more vulnerable to interception. All bombers without escorts were slaughtered it was only a matter of how quickly it would take.

That's really cool.

The aircraft speed dropped dramatically making it much easier to intercept. It was a congressional over reaction I believe.

Nope, just make a 4/5 seater small and light enough to include its own parachute landing system. Problem solved.

@@rosiehawtrey ~distressed Paul Bertorelli noises~

@@rosiehawtrey I don’t think a parachute system is something you want to rely on if you have the same sorts of accidents as you have with cars (distraction, negligence, sleep deprivation, plain old bad driving habits) since damage to the parachute system could easily occur in an accident, and even if it doesn’t, a car sized object packed full of high energy density batteries or (less likely) fuel falling from the sky, presumably already badly damaged, is going to be hazardous as hell, parachute or no. And that’s not even getting into how dangerous deliberate misuse or simple negligence could be, someone getting distracted and hitting a building is way, way more dangerous with an aircraft.

@@evanwickstrom5698 you are so right! I think there is NO WAY flying cars would be allowed without fully automated “pilot” systems. Imagining most of my acquaintances flying in 3 dimensional urban traffic gives me panic attacks.

I think you overestimate the lack of stupidity in any given population of Homo sapiens. Once AI is doing everything for us, maybe. But when that happens, we’ll probably have many many other problems that will make flying cars a lower priority. I am hugely disappointed, nonetheless. I grew up on the assumption that a cure for cancer and flying cars were a matter of years away. Well, it’s been over half a century and… bugger all. Ok, cancer is a bit less deadly than it was, which is great.

This is indeed a great channel, even if aeroplanes aren't exactly my speciality, to say the least... I keep watching every time, because it's well explained and easy to understand, even to my newbie ears. I walk away having learned a lot every single time 🙂

Imagine the beta version of terrain following radar auto-flight in fog or at night😮

F-22 pilots...

@@sneekiboi136 "A" is clearly the grade, not the model, lol.

Hang out long enough, and the war will be over. Go ask your Commander if you can wait for the 2nd generation. 😂

If you value your wallet, reliability, and your sanity, never buy the "A" model of any new vehicle, either, or the "A" model of any new technology on them...

With American heft

The corpulent "Betty" was meant to do double-duty as a freight/personnel carrier, as was the British "Stirling" bomber.

That was my Father’s comment when I was building the B-26 model in about 1964. He was a USN Corpsman in the early part of the Pacific theater.

Thats because the "other" b26 is better lol

@@kiwidiesel As you'd expect from a plane that debuted at the end of WW2 versus one designed before the US entered the war, with all the experience of operating the original B-26 plus more going into the design and testing. It's a bit like pointing out that a 1946 Chevrolet was a better car than a 1936 Ford. Or that the F-15E Strike Eagle is a better strike fighter than the F-4E Phantom. No kidding. It's a later, more advanced design that builds on the experience gained from the previous type.

@@kiwidiesel yeah the 320th bomb group of the 12th AAF beg to differ.

Lmfao 🤣

B26 built in Baltimore catty not including

Thanks it’s great to read, that’s really interesting. Was Vyse and Vxse taken to be equal and practically the exact same indicated airspeed for nearly all (weights and) altitudes and air densities? …… and did the R R Dart run at a single speed nearly all the time? It must have been one of the very first successful turboprop engines. The HS748 wing looked exceptionally efficient, the aspect ratio was so much higher than on something like a Lockheed Electra. I wonder does Vx and Vy separate more with faster planes? The improved late 1980s BAE Advanced Turboprop transport with modern engines would have a totally new C.O.A. and (presumably thicker) flight manual/s. Did you ever fly in one?

@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 lots to unpack here 😂 Okay, so I need to qualify this by saying it’s been a long time since I’ve had much to do with light twins, I fly heavy twins these days. Light twins use different terms from big airplanes. In big airplane land we use Vr, V1, and V2 as the important speeds. Vr is rotation speed. V1 is the go speed, if you reach V1, you continue with the take off no matter how much runway is left (this is an important point if you ever want to read the Concorde accident report). VYSE is V2 I believe ->92kts when empty, or single engine safety speed in big airplanes, they don’t use a blue line because it’s so variable with weight ->the higher the weight, the higher V2 is. You write the speed on a card and display it, or simply display the airplane card like the Hawker had. You also use a speed bug for this speed. You also brief this speed. This is an important speed 😂. You never want to be below this speed, and if you are, you can’t pitch up until you reach it. In the Hawker the airplane is so gutless that it won’t even reach 92kts empty unless the wheels are in the well, and the flaps are 30 degrees or less (approach flaps, landing flaps was 52.5 degrees and rather an exciting configuration when in the missed, so we didn’t use it unless landing assured). So the short of it is lack of auto feather was a NO GO item, and in the single engine missed approach, the calls were “Max power,” “Flaps up one notch,” “Gear up,” “HP,” “LP,” “Feather.” All while pitching for 92kts, and confirming the levers that the PNF was operating. The HP (firewall), and LP (fuel tank), were high pressure and low pressure fuel cocks, the British love to have all sorts of cocks in the airplane. It makes me curious about his statement that the B26 would crash below V2, in the airplanes I’ve flown you must pitch down until it’s at V2, but that doesn’t mean crashing is automatic, you may be able to squeak some speed out of it and clean it up before impact…. I should state I’ve never flown an airplane that had such a large range between rotation, VMC, and V2, and this is a 30,000lbs class airplane with pistons so it’s probably gutless af. 🤷‍♂️ I do understand the bit about the runway being too short though, if you’re taking off and you don’t reach V1 before the airplane starts flying and you have an engine failure, you’ll have to set it back down for sure until you reach V1, or you bring it to a stop ->if the runway isn’t long enough for this, there is nothing you can do. But given I don’t have his patreon, I can’t read the AFM myself. Usually it’s kind of a moot point though, V1 on the planes I’ve flown is usually about the same as Vr, which means if you can pull that airplane off the ground, you’re at V1 and it’s gonna fly, again, I can’t check the book in this case. You ride V2 until clear of obstacles, and then you lower the nose, clean up the airplane, and pitch for a higher climb speed. Vr, V1, and V2 are all dependent specifically dependent upon weight. But here are some more variables for V1 www.flightdeckfriend.com/ask-a-pilot/what-is-v1-speed-for-a-commercial-aircraft/ The idea here is that if you’ve got a longer runway, you have a higher V1 speed, which means you can reject after you’ve covered a longer distance on the runway (later on the take off roll), in addition it means you’re at a higher speed for rotation which is inherently safer if you lose an engine. VXSE wasn’t used, in fact I’m not sure I’ve seen that speed listed for any of the big airplanes I’ve flown ->maybe we just called it something else, not sure. Now I haven’t flown many different types of big airplanes, but the ones I have flown are fucking gutless, and pitching to a slower speed than V2 wouldn’t be a good idea I feel. I just don’t see where this speed would be super important, I should qualify that statement by saying I do fly in the mountains, we pitch for V2 out of necessity. Depending upon which source you read and who wrote it, you might hear this is V2. It’s completely irrelevant whether this is in fact V2 or if VYSE is, because v2 is the published speed, and that’s the one you’re using to meet performance criteria. The Dart is direct drive, it’s an oddity for sure, but built to be very robust. The Dart had a single lever to control power and prop pitch (fancy). It’s an outdated theory of how to produce a turbo prop engine. Basically the aim was to size the compressor to the turbine wheel, which means you’ll always temp the turbine out before you over torque it. They clearly liked this for safety as meat headed pilots couldn’t jam the power lever forward to break the gearbox. In a modern turbo prop like a PT6, the compressor is vastly oversized compared to the turbine wheel ->you lose a bit of fuel efficiency, but as altitude increases you can spin the compressor faster to maintain max torque without temping the engine out (up to a point). Whereas a direct drive engine never truly produces max torque, it’s almost always a variable (they say water meth gave you max torque with the dart at any air temp but I seriously doubt that claim). I honestly can’t remember what N1 was doing in the dart. I’m not sure if it was running 100% all the time, it was a long time ago. I threw a compressor blade once with the dart, it exited the cowling and no one noticed for a week, the engine temp was high for the amount of power it was producing, but within normal limits, so maintenance didn’t check it until the weekly was due. So the direct drive was clearly better at taking damage than a PT6, but the PT6 ducting prevented FOD from entering in the first place so that’s kind of a negative for the dart lol. Here is a good pic of the panel: abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1199606 Greg might be better to ask about Vx and Vy’s relationship to aircraft performance. I can tell you the huge wing of the Hawker was specifically built for short field performance, and it had great handling qualities in the stall and low airspeeds (pussy cat). I never flew the ATP. I’ll be honest though, the HS748 wasn’t built for modern operations. The HS748 was designed for extreme robustness, things like fuel economy, payload, and passenger comfort suffered because of this. They wanted the Hawker to have military sales that never materialized, so the extra weight of the multi spar wing impacted performance and the civilian market didn’t have a need to take battle damage for example. So by the time the ATP came out and we already had the Dash 8, Saab, and soon to be ATR, the old hawker design couldn’t compete. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_ATP

@@drewski5730 A super read Drewski, thanks for your time and I’ll go over it again a few times for the enjoyment. Going to a strange airport with a short runway must have been less than welcome with pages of sequential performance graphs to grind through and cross check on the day, no electronic flight bags to help out. Your big reply is really appreciated, thanks.

@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 honestly I never went through all the spaghetti graphs for a runway with the Hawker, I didn’t have to. I have gone through spaghetti charts with the ATR many times. In modern operations the company will take a runway, plug it into the spaghetti charts (runway length, width, gradient, altitude, etc), and build a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will have a page for each runway. And each runway and airport that the company goes to will have its own spreadsheet, and they’ll throw all of them into a book (or if you’re using an electronic flight bag, a pdf document or database). Each spreadsheet will have columns and rows with the other missing variables like temperature, altimeter setting, snow/ice/standing water, and the corresponding column and row will have a weight value (max take off weight under those conditions), and speed values for Vr, V1, and V2 ->these are the values you write on the cards and bug on the airspeed indicator. So for example if I wanted to use runway 26L in Vancouver for take off (or landing), I would look up the spreadsheet for runway 26L in YVR in the book/binder (or electronic database pdf). Then I would plug in my temperature, wind speed, altimeter, runway conditions etc and just look up the values. The company can build all these charts manually by plugging each runway and airport combination into a spaghetti chart, and plotting the results and transferring to manually built spreadsheet. The manually built spreadsheet will then get added to an actual binder, or scanned into database. So you can use the old school spaghetti charts to build an electronic database if you’re a real keener. Or companies like ATR have programs called flight operations software (FOS), where dispatch can plug those numbers in themselves and then print or email them out to a flight crew, you get the same spreadsheet, it’s just electronically produced this way and no one has to plot points on a spaghetti graph. As a pilot there is an app you can use on the iPad if your company is fancy where you just plug in your environmental factors and it tells you your speeds and weights; or just have a pdf document electronically saved on the iPad you can manually sift through. So as you can see the runway spreadsheets that may have been plotted in the 80’s are still relevant and used today, and are more are less still built the same way in some circumstances. If you’ve got any more questions fire away. ;) Edit: here is the new ATR flight operations software pamphlet. www.atr-aircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/brochure_fos_sps_2017_138-1.pdf

Ahhh the 46500# dog whistle. Used it in many 3000' strips, wat limited performance. Hp/lp/feather.

Whoa, Magnar is here! I watch his channel, very good stuff.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles, you are a great source of knowledge and inspiration.

It does make you appreciate the invention of simulators. If they had modern flight simulators, they would have been able to train a lot safer.

Hi Tom, I didn't cover that because it was more or less a constant across all types and even all Air Forces. That is until of course the average experience of Axis pilots went way down. Yes, experience counts, especially in flying. I'm strongly against reducing the 1500 hour rule. Had they had a 1500 hour requirement in B-26s and simulators, accidents would have been way way down.

My Mom’s cousin was one of them. He crashed during training.

I think that the loss figures for training amounted to thirty thousand!

@@mongolike513 thanks for your reply. Between 1941 and 1945 the Army Air Force suffered approximately 15,500 fatalities in 6,350 fatal accidents with the lose of slightly more than 7,100 aircraft. These extensive losses occurred just within the continental United States. While primarily training related accidents, some can be attributed to such things as testing, maintenance checks, operational and administrative flying. This number does not include similar losses to Naval/Marine/Coast Guard Aviation. These numbers were arrived at through examination of the AAF Statistical Digest published in December 1945. So your point is correct, aviation in the early 1940’s was dangerous business even when no one was shooting at you.

Thanks, I feel the same way.