The Navy did not have much luck with the B-24 (PB4Y) either. In just
ten days at Miramar (Camp Kearny), there were three crashes with 36
fatalities. One was lost on takeoff. There has to some other
explanation other than the low flying time of the pilots. I went
straight from receiving my wings to C-118 (DC-6) transition in the
early 1960s and don't recall any particular problems. Of course, I
always had a instructor along, but he never had to take it away from
me. None of the other new pilots had any particular problems either
that I was aware of.


On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:31:37 -0800, Dale wrote:

Yes and no on the B-24 being harder to fly. I had no multi-engine time or large
aircraft time when I started flying the bombers. I had a still wet multi engine
rating and a bunch of Cessna time. G I started on the B-17 and found it to be
just an airplane. (A 50K pound, 4 engine taildragger...but still just an
airplane.) In 20 or 30 hours I was able to takeoff, land and taxi safely...not
up to type rating standards but safe enough. After quite a bit of time in the
-17 I started flying the -24. She just wasn't as much fun to fly. It's a pain
to taxi, needs lots of runway, climbs like a pig, is heavy on the controls,
engine out work is WORK, is difficult to trim in pitch and tough to get a
greaser landing in. But as I flew her and got to know how to handle her I
started to like her more and more. She became easy to taxi, you get used to the
control forces, trimming wasn't really all that hard and if you worked at it
you could roll the mains on and hold that nosewheel off until you ran out of
elevator. Both the -17 and the -24 have their difficult areas and their easy
areas.

the WWII training accidents...remember that the guys getting into these
airplanes only had a couple hundred hours of flying time.

--
Dale L. Falk

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing
as simply messing around with airplanes.

http://home.gci.net/~sncdfalk/flying.html