Thursday, November 14, 2013

Here's something you don't see every day: B-24 deliberately ditched in the river

NACA test of the B-24 on the James River, 1944.

7 comments:

  1. That cool-ass motherfucker climbed out of his ditched aircraft, stood on top of the floating wreckage, and combed. his. hair.

    Badass.

    Go Air Force.

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  2. Cool to see the old James River bridge. What the heck is it that flies off at first impact and splashes down in front of it? Notice the taped on extra padding on arms and legs of the aircrew?

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  3. How's that saying go, "he's so cool the rest of his crew kept their beers in his cargo pockets"? Yeah...that was pretty slick!

    Awesome video, thanks for posting! Unashamedly swiped it, will post it (and some linky-love) on FB, my Grandfather was a B24 mech in Italy, he'd get a kick out of watching this!

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  4. And who says airplanes don't have souls. Right after the tail hit, the nose pitched up. Firmly believe that was the airplane saying "Get me the Hell out of here, I don't swim, I fly!

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  5. The bombay doors on the 24 were the weakest point of a water ditching happened.

    The doors would collapse and water rush in very quickly.

    The B24 would not stay afloat for more than seconds.

    Maybe they were trying to find a way to strengthen the door system.

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  6. Nice, and that was testing for the Navy before they started using B-24s as sub chasers...

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