{"id":54470,"date":"2015-07-24T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54470"},"modified":"2015-07-24T07:34:33","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T12:34:33","slug":"hot-gear-friday-the-four-engined-bomber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54470","title":{"rendered":"Hot Gear Friday: The Four Engined Bomber"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was about this time seventy years ago that World War II was heading toward its climax; Germany had surrendered; \u00a0Marines and soldiers were mopping up on Okinawa. \u00a0The world didn’t know about the atomic bomb yet.<\/p>\n

And the idea of Air Power was at its peak; after three years of strategic bombing over Europe, and about a year’s worth over Japan, the idea that one could bomb ones’ opponents out of a war – very much in vogue before the war – still held great sway.<\/p>\n

Of course, strategic bombing over Europe had had a ghastly toll; the US Army Air Force lost more men in the air than the Marines did in the entire Pacific War.<\/p>\n

And the bulk of those casualties came among the crews of the roughly 6-7,000 bombers lost over Germany (among the Americans alone; the Brits also paid a horrific price).<\/p>\n

There was the most famous, the Boeing B-17…:<\/p>\n

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…with its legendary toughness without which the toll might have been vastly worse.<\/p>\n

And the B-24 Liberator – newer, faster, but less popular, and generally regarded as less tough…<\/p>\n

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…and the B-29, which costs as much to develop as the entire Manhattan Project, carried most of the weight in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

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Why do I bring it up?<\/p>\n

Because as we discuss the idea that our younger genration of twenty somethings, raised during the Obama economy by helicopter parents and made into a cause – the “Millennials” – by a generation of Baby Boom media who want to have someone to poke and prod the way they were poked and prodded and examined – many of whom are out in the streets protesting for $15 an hour to run a shake machine (for a while, maybe), it’s worth remembering this; \u00a0the\u00a0officers<\/em>, the pilots and navigators and bombardiers who flew these planes, averaged 22 years old.<\/p>\n

Their enlisted crewmen? \u00a0The flight engineers and radiomen and 3-4 gunners on each plane? \u00a0They averaged 19 years old.<\/p>\n

And this was what they did just to get the planes – in this case, the B24 – into the air.<\/p>\n