B18 American Bomber

[cut67]

Discuss

[MrKrabs]

A fine whole number between 17 and 19 and a fine letter of the alphabet as well - suppose that is why it is number two on the alphabetical list? 

[Oldman731]

Discuss

You'd have to be suspicious of the usefulness of a weapon named "Digby."

- oldman

[bustr]

When war came to the Pacific, most of the B-18/B-18A aircraft based overseas in the Philippines and in Hawaii were destroyed on the ground in the initial Japanese onslaught. The few Bolos that remained played no significant role in subsequent operations.

The Bolos remaining in the continental USA and in the Caribbean were then deployed in a defensive role in anticipation of attacks on the US mainland. These attacks never materialized. B-17s supplanted B-18s in first-line service in 1942. Following this, 122 B-18As were modified for anti-submarine warfare. The bombardier was replaced by a search radar with a large radome. Magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) equipment was sometimes housed in a tail boom. These aircraft, designated B-18B, were used in the Caribbean on anti-submarine patrol.

[jimbo71]

Pre war design.  Twin engine medium bomber that carried 4,500 lbs of ords and had .30 caliber defensive guns.

Sounds like an American version of the HE-111

Douglas built it, i  imagine it was dependable and good to fly.

[cut67]

I just think it would be a good edition. It was a trainer yeah but honestly why not include it? Seeing the same planes fly around all the time gets kind of boring and I love to fly different bombers so. Just a thought.

[bustr]

And Waffle in his spare time besides the Iowa class battleship he is building for AH3 can give you several bombers and the Bizmark.......

I bet everyone in WW2 got tired of seeing the same aircraft they had to shoot down.

[colmbo]

And the B-23 as well, the Douglas successor to the B-18.

I got to see one fly back in the 80's.  It belonged to the Univ. of Washington and was in Anchorage for whatever reason.

[bustr]

While significantly faster and better armed than the B-18, the B-23 was not comparable to newer medium bombers like the North American B-25 Mitchell and Martin B-26 Marauder. For this reason, the 38 B-23s built were never used in combat overseas, although for a brief period, they were employed as patrol aircraft stationed on the west coast of the United States.[1] The B-23s were primarily relegated to training duties although 18 of the type were converted as transports and redesignated as the UC-67.

The B-23 also served as a testbed for new engines and systems. One was used for turbosupercharger development by General Electric at Schenectady, NY.

After World War II, many examples were used as executive transports with appropriate internal modifications and as a result a large number have survived. With its wartime experience with the type, GE bought and used five of them. Howard Hughes (among others) used converted B-23s as personal aircraft.

[Greebo]

A new ride represents a big investment in man-hours for HTC so it needs to have a role in either the MA or in scenarios to be worth adding and it is hard to see how the B-18 would be useful for either. Few early/mid war bombers would do well in the MA but there are many that would be much more useful than the B-18 in scenarios. For instance the Wellington, Do 217, Ju 188, Ki-21, Pe-2, SM-79 or Il-4. We are not exactly under-represented with US bombers anyway.

[MOSQ]

This post reminded me of one of my Dad's war memories that he wrote out before he died. Someday I'll post the entire document, but here's a snippet.
The setup: He graduated from Ga Tech ROTC in June, 1941. All ROTC engineers went either to Hawaii or the Panama Canal to shore up defenses for the expected war. He ended up at Rio Hata airfield in the Canal Zone and because he was a chemical engineer was the base Ordinance Officer. Being the brand new Lt he was the officer of the day on Sunday, Dec 7th.  Around Dec 12th this happened, in his words:

"In the meantime, we had two exciting nights. One night, someone saw something out in the Gulf that could have been a submarine. A B-18 loaded with four 500# bombs (only the Navy had depth charges) while attempting to take off lost an engine and veered into a barracks occupied by Corps of Engineer troops and the Engineer's office. A Colonel and a Major, normally resident in my barracks, were working late at the office that night and were killed when the plane plowed into their office. Fortunately, there was no fire. Medical personnel removed the injured crew from the plane, and reported they saw the bombs in a pile near the front of the plane, indicating they had been disengaged from the bomb racks, thrown forward, and were armed. (The arming pins were pulled when the bombs left the racks). We did not have Bomb Disposal troops at that time; it was the Ordnance Officer's duty to remove the bombs. I took one look, and decided that I would wait for daylight, but up came Colonel Hix, who ordered me to get them out now. I asked for a volunteer to go in with me, and the first to step up was Sergeant Lococo. He had a reputation of being a wild one, and I was reluctant to accept him. On second thought, I decided he deserved a chance, so in we went while everyone else was ordered to get to a safe distance. Nose fuzes were equipped with a propeller to spin in the air to back off the protective cover over the mushroom head of the metal striker that initiates the explosion upon impact. The arming wire kept the propeller from turning until the bomb left the rack. Tail fuses had no propeller, and were actuated by inertia upon impact. Their arming wires kept the weight of the striker from moving forward. Tail fuses were more dangerous than nose fuses, since there was nothing to keep them from being activated by being shaken or dropped after the arming wire had been removed. We unscrewed the fuses from the bombs one at a time by flashlight and carried them out to a safe place. All were found to be armed. This took several hours, but obviously we were successful. Colonel Hix told the staff the next day that it was my red hair that made me so lucky."

So yes, let's include the  B18 and when the crash on takeoff they kill half the players in Tower!

[JVboob]

Would you Greebo or bustr agree the the B25J needs to be in the game?

The C is alright for scenarios the H for CAS but theres a gap that needs filled. The C has bombsight but is defensless whereas the H has decent defenses but no bomb sight or formations. If we had the J id be willing to bet it would see good use. The range wasnt that bad either.

[Greebo]

I'd say the B-26 is a reasonable substitute for a B-25J so it does not represent a massive hole in the plane set. OTOH with the appropriate skins it does give us an extra Soviet and British as well as USAAF bomber for scenarios. Also the B-25J would not need anywhere near as much time to create as a completely new bomber. As far as I can tell from a quick look at photos on the web HTC would just need to graft the existing internal and external nose shapes of the B-25C onto the B-25H, maybe alter the internal bomb aimer and cockpit art a bit, set up the new weights and bomb loads and get one of the skinner team to do a skin for it.

[JVboob]

B25s in general take more abuse than a 26 and 1.4hrs beats 50min for those long runs. Id like to beable to not worry about fuel when hitting dar city or ord strats. and It my favorite BUFF ever. The model and defensive guns are there with the H just like you said change weight, nose and idk if the cockpit would need any changing? I dont know much about modeling or skinning ect but most of it is already there if not all of it.

[Greebo]

The H had extra armour around the windscreen so the cockpit art would either need to be altered from the H or C model, likely depending on what would involve the least work.