Tag: aircraft: bombers

wwiiafterwwii 10th anniversary / bric-a-brac post

jwh197515 Comments

I wish to thank all readers over the past ten years. This is a mixture of topics I have had in my head probably not big enough for study on their own.

To start, I have never explained the image I used as the cover photo for wwiiafterwwii.

The cover photo and the color photo above were taken at Elizabeth City, NC on 17 February 1960. It shows the last PB-1G (USCG nomenclature for the B-17 Flying Fortress) still in US Coast Guard service; also the very last Flying Fortress of any version left in any of the five armed forces; alongside the USCG’s first SC-130B Hercules.

This particular Flying Fortress, serial #77254, had been a stock B-17 during WWII. It was one of eighteen bombers transferred to the US Coast Guard from the US Army after WWII for conversion into unarmed lifeboat-droppers. After two years in that role, this particular plane was modified again for a Coast & Geodetic Survey project, with a panoramic high-detail camera.

(The camera cost $1.5 million ($19.99 million in 2025 dollars) and was for aerial mapping. It was worth more than the Flying Fortress itself.) (official US Coast Guard photo)

This plane had all WWII guns deleted, and was fitted with a radar and LORAN receiver. The WWII Norden bombsight in the nose was retained as it was helpful to line up camera runs.

Besides the mapping project this PB-1G also did International Ice Patrol flights. It ceased active use in October 1959 and was discarded in 1960, on the same day as the photo.

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the WWII gun turret in the Nevada desert

jwh197512 Comments

The Nevada National Security Site, the nuclear test site north of Las Vegas, is closed to the public. Deep within this desert facility remains a most improbable thing, a turret off a WWII US Navy cruiser.

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(The WWII cruiser turret at the NNSS.) (US Dept. of Energy photo)

louisville1930s

(The “B” (upper forward) turret of USS Louisville (CA-28) prior to WWII.)

smithsonian

(A nuclear test to the north turns night into day on Fremont St.)

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WWII, the autobahn, Ike, the Interstates, and one-mile-in-five

jwh197518 Comments

Earlier this summer I was talking with a fellow veteran and the subject of “one-mile-in-five” on the Interstate highways came up.

The vague gist is that before WWII, Germany designed its famous autobahn network with war in mind. Near WWII’s conclusion, Gen. Eisenhower was impressed with the autobahn and during his later Presidency ordered a copy of it made, the USA’s Interstate system, mostly for military reasons including for US Air Force bombers to use when their bases got taken out by Soviet ICBMs – and one mile of every five is straight and level for this reason.

Like many Americans I have heard this before and in fact, the specific highway identified by my acquaintance (a certain stretch of I-80 in Nebraska) I have also previously heard as an example location.

ju88a

(German Bf-110G staged for autobahn operation near the end of WWII in Europe.)

late1940scon

(Harley-Davidson WLAs of the United States Constabulary on the German autobahn after WWII.)

Eisenhower-Interstate

(Sign of the USA’s Interstate highway system.)

This is the type of thing that enough Americans have heard that it becomes accepted through cycles of repetition. To anybody who has driven the endless straightaways of I-15 in Utah or I-70 in Kansas it probably seems reasonable that bombers could land there, and there is usually somebody in earshot to interject “yes he’s right, I’ve heard that too”.

“One-mile-in-five” and the military on the Interstates in general, has equal portions of real fact, misconstrued things, and outright error. Mostly in wwiiafterwwii I cover weapons and equipment; for readers who prefer that I will return to that in the future. Perhaps this will be of interest however.

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WWII weapons in the Indonesian Independence War

jwh197513 Comments

From WWII’s end in 1945 until 1949, pro-independence Indonesians in the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands military fought a conflict which saw a huge variety of WWII weapons, both Japanese and Allied, in further use.

top

(A WWII Dutch M.95 rifle rechambered to .303 British by Indonesia during the 1950s.)

Ki48

(Kawasaki Ki-48 “Lily” bomber of the Indonesian air force during the late 1940s.)

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(Indonesian troops with Arisaka Type 99 rifles during 1949.)

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what happened to Japan’s WWII aircraft companies after 1945

jwh197533 Comments

When WWII began in 1939 Japan was an aeronautical giant; one of the top five aerospace powers on Earth. Six years later the industry lay in ruins and a year after that, no longer even existed on paper.

With the possible exception of Mitsubishi, very little was ever written about Japanese aerospace companies before WWII and most were unknown outside of their homeland; in contrast to companies like Messerschmitt or Boeing which were famous worldwide. Nearly no attention at all was given to what happened to them after WWII.

A study of their final fates also has a second story. This is how defense contractors – which dominated Japan’s GDP during the early 1940s – were dismantled in a controlled way to limit the “contagion” of their loss to the wider postwar economy.

mitsubishinagaya1945

(Mitsubishi’s bombed-out factory at Nagoya at the end of WWII.)

nakajimaOtaHQ

(The Nakajima Aircraft corporate offices in Ota during the post-WWII American occupation. Today a Subaru factory; one of Nakajima’s descendants, is on these grounds.)

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Bedcheck Charlie 1950 – 1953

jwh19756 Comments

The Korean War’s air combat is best known for the duels of MiG-15s and F-86 Sabres in the world’s first jet-vs-jet matchups. An unusual sideshow to that was North Korea’s use of woefully obsolete WWII types as night harassment planes. They were called “Bedcheck Charlies” by the Americans.

82_1

(North Korean Po-2 “Mule” which was used as a Bedcheck Charlie plane, just as the Soviets had done during WWII.) (artwork via Wings Palette website)

mbr2

(The MBR-2bis, another WWII Soviet plane used by the North Koreans for Bedcheck Charlie missions.)

koreaF4U-5NL

(Two of the WWII-legacy American answers to the problem: a F4U-5NL Corsair and in the background, a F7F-3N Tigercat.)

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WWII aircraft in Lebanon

jwh197517 Comments

Sadly the military history of Lebanon will, at least for the near future, be dominated by the horrible 1970s – 1980s civil war. The country did have military history prior to that, including WWII-era warplanes in its early air force.

harvardiia

(Lebanese air force Harvard, the RAF’s name for WWII lend-leased T-6 Texan trainers.)

b5

(Lebanese air force SM.79 bomber. The country was the last in the world to fly this WWII Italian warplane.)

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