[John Dell]

Don, I’d be really interested in what you can find out about your doctor’s grandfather’s B-17G. Maybe he has some good photos.

Thanks for that link. I read the part about the problems with the B-24. I’ve read about these issues in several books. One modification that showed promise was to mount a B-26 tail turret to the lower nose of the B-24D. This would have been fairly light weight and would still allow forward visibility for the bombardier and navigator. But as mentioned in the article, they didn’t want to disrupt the production line or overwhelm the modification centers. The B-24N would have been the ultimate solution, but the war ended before it could go into production. It seems Doolittle’s ultimate solution though was to limit the 8th Air Force to two major types, the B-17 and the P-51. This makes me wonder if the 15th Air Force in the MTO had the same problems with the B-24. They operated more B-24 units than B-17.