Warbird Information Exchange

The Atka B-24D Liberator bomber, located at its crash site in Atka Island, Alaska, played a highly significant role in World War II. In the Aleutian Campaign against the Imperial Japanese forces from 1942 to 1943 -the only battles fought in North America during the war -it was a superb weapon. This aircraft flew in at least 18 combat missions before finally succumbing to bad weather rather than enemy action.

Manufactured in 1941, it was the 19th of only 20 B-24Ds produced and is now only one of two B-24Ds known to exist in the world. Designed and built by Consolidated Aircraft, the original appearance of Serial #40-2367 was that of a four-engine bomber with twin tail fins. It weighed approximately 36,000 pounds, had a wingspan of 110 feet and was 67 feet long. It carried a crew of 9 men and was primarily used for bombing. This B-24D airplane came to Alaska in March 1942 and served exclusively in the Aleutian Campaign, but had been taken from combat duty and was being used as a weather observation plane. Had it crashed during combat, the usual pattern of explosion, fire or total loss at sea, would have destroyed it.

However, on December 9, 1942 it was crash-landed in Atka, Alaska, in an emergency landing which saved several lives. The tail broke off in the characteristic B-24 manner, but the tail section is intact, minus the vertical tail fins, which are in the vicinity of the aircraft.

...Manufactured in 1941, it was the 19th of only 20 B-24Ds produced and is now only one of two B-24Ds known to exist in the world....

how did the tail come apart?

how did the tail come apart?

Found the following Blog with pictures of the plane...interior shots, people on the wing, etc. Also a youtube video. The narrative on the video will make you cringe ("This is a B-25 Liberator"). So will some of the captions on the pictures i.e. "The spare tire hanging down looks like new". You get the idea.

http://www.kensblog.com/aspx/blob2/blob ... beid=31996

SAVING THE PAST

The wreckage of that B-24, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979, gained a new layer of protection earlier this month. It's one of nine sites to become part of the new Valor of the Pacific National Monument created by the Bush Administration in time for the 67th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In addition to the bomber, there are two other Valor designations in the Aleutians -- the Japanese occupation sites on Kiska Island and battlegrounds on Attu. There are also five in Hawaii and one in California -- the Tule Lake Segregation Center where Japanese-Americans were interned during the war.

It's probably safe to say more caribou than people have visited the B-24 crash site. But those who have seen it, even just from the air, have to wonder how it got there.

"I've always been impressed by this story," said Ted Spencer, founder of the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, who's among the few to have visited the site. "It's dark, you can't see, you're running out of fuel, the bases are socked in. To find this little tiny spot and plop the plane down in there. ...

"There are so many stories where planes just disappeared; they went into the water. In this case, they lived to be old men."


RARE BIRD

Although there are earlier and later models out there, the Atka B-24D is one of only three of its kind left in the world, according to Spencer. One is on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio. The other, an assortment of its parts anyway, sits on a military base in Libya.

That one, the "Lady Be Good," disappeared on its way home from a mission over Italy in 1943. It wasn't until 15 years later that an oil exploration team discovered its wreckage from the air deep in the Libyan Desert.


Spencer first heard of the Atka B-24 in 1976, when he got his hands on a copy of an Army Corps of Engineers' WWII clean-up report that mentioned a bomber at Bechevin Bay in good condition.

"So I got a hankering to go there," he said.

He volunteered to do a historic survey as part of the effort to get the plane listed on the national register in 1979.

In 1982, on the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Dutch Harbor, the Alaskan Historical Aircraft Society presented an exhibit on the Aleutian Campaign at the Anchorage museum. And the strangest thing happened.

Spencer was watching people walking through it when he noticed a woman from a tour group stop in front of a photo of the bomber.

"She pointed to the picture and said, 'That was my brother's plane.' "

That's how Spencer found the pilot, John Andrews, who was alive and well in Massachusetts. Andrews was on a business trip to Indonesia and stopping in Anchorage on his flight home.

They met up and Andrews regaled Spencer for hours with stories of flying in the Aleutians. Andrews had kept in touch with Blau. Spencer arranged for an Aleutian reunion the following year.

In 1983, the three of them returned with a film crew as part of a documentary Spencer was making called "The Forgotten Front: Veterans Remember."

Space was limited so Blau and his wife took a commercial flight to Adak. Spencer, Andrews and the film crew landed in Bechevin Bay in a Grumman Widgeon.

It was a day as rare as the bomber itself.

"There were no clouds, no wind and it was 70 degrees," Spencer said. "A pilot who'd been flying out there 30 years said he'd never seen Atka from one end to the other until that day. It was almost providence we got that kind of weather."

On the beach at Bechevin Bay, Andrews climbed out of the Widgeon, lit up a cigarette then walked the quarter mile up to the crash site.

"You could tell it had an impact, coming back to the bones of that experience," Spencer said. "They were all facing their maker that day and he pulled them out of it."

The plan was to return the next day with Blau to do more filming. But by then the Aleutian weather was back to its old ways. It pounced and pinned them down for days, until they ran out of time.


LIFT IT OR LEAVE IT?

Debbie Corbett, regional archeologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees these historical Aleutian areas, said the sites chosen for new national monument designation will help illustrate the overall story of the war in the Aleutians. And for pushing 70 years of exposure to the elements, she thinks the Atka B-24 is in relatively good shape.

Spencer, who'd like more than anything to see the plane brought in and restored, doesn't agree.

"It's really beginning to suffer," he said.
The muskeg is slowly swallowing the wreck. High winds have blown away parts and pieces. And then there are the souvenir hunters.

The late Kevin Bell, captain of the 120-foot Fish and Wildlife research vessel, the Tiglax, visited the crash site a couple of years ago and sent Spencer a series of photographs documenting its condition.

"I was shocked at the amount of looting that had taken place on the airplane," Spencer said. "They've chopped away the trailing edge of both wings. The propeller blade was extracted from one of (the) propeller hubs. Somebody also chopped off the left wing tip with a hatchet."
There's more, but you get the picture.

"Over the years I've watched this plane, there have been a number of attempts by people to salvage it," Spencer said. "There are a lot of dreamers out there in the war bird business. But it's a huge task dismantling it, taking (it) out, reassembling it, restoring it. It's a gigantic project that takes a lot of vision and a lot of money."

In the meantime, he's hopeful this new Valor of the Pacific National Monument designation will help protect the aging bomber.

"Even though it's been recognized as a historical object for three decades, I don't think any resources have been dedicated to preserving it. This really puts icing on its historical importance and hopefully resulting in some resources and action."

The Consolidated B-24 Liberator was an American heavy bomber, built by Consolidated Aircraft. It was produced in greater numbers than any other American combat aircraft of World War II and still holds the record as the most produced U.S. military aircraft. It was used by many Allied air forces and every U.S. branch of service during the war, attaining a distinguished war record with its operations in the northern European, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters.