Consolidated Aircraft is well known for the PBY Catalina flying boat and the B-24 Liberator bomber.

* The novel Face of a Hero ( 1950 ) tells the story of a B-24 crew operating from an airport in Puglia, Italy in 1944 ; it is based on the real experiences of its author, Louis Falstein, who had been a tail gunner on a USAAF B-24.

The Calanshio Sand Sea is the site of the missing World War II B-24 Liberator " Lady Be Good ".

The South Country is home to a series of six difficult peaks, namely Mount Phillips, Comanche Peak, Big Red, Bear Mountain, Black Mountain, and Schaefers Peak, as well as Trail Peak, which is popular for its relative ease, its nearness to Beaubien, and the wreckage of the crash of a B-24 bomber in 1942 near its summit.

* January 2 – Japanese antiaircraft guns shoot down three United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberators over Maloelap during a daylight raid, forcing B-24s to switch to night raids in which their bombing is much less accurate.

Recently added to the museum is a B-24 Liberator, which was moved to Hendon from Cosford.

However, the base is home to the Eighth Air Force Museum, which hosts static displays of numerous aircraft including a Royal Air Force Avro Vulcan bomber, B-24, B-17, P-51, SR-71, F-111, and multiple versions of the B-52.

A crashed B-24 Liberator on Atka is one of the 9 sites in the monument.

A B-24 nose is on display in the Officer's Club event facility adjacent to the North Hangar.

Equally famous is the B-24 Liberator, a heavy bomber which, like the Catalina, saw action in both the Pacific and European theaters.

The novel describes in detail the raids of the B-24 bombers on Romania, Yougoslavia, northern Italy, Southern France and Germany.

* In the young adult novel Under a War-Torn Sky, the main character Henry Forester co-pilots Out of the Blue, a U. S. B-24 Liberator serving in the Royal Air Force.

Some were diverted ( e. g. to the RAF airfield on Cyprus ), and one B-24 with 365 shell holes in it landed in Libya 14 hours after departing ..

Heading to a rendezvous with Vichy French ships under Red Cross banners, the U-boats were attacked by a U. S. Army B-24 Liberator bomber.

Nauru Island under attack by B-24 Liberator bombers of the Seventh Air Force

On 22 June of the same year, nine B-24 Liberators of the United States Army Air Forces used Azon glide bombs against the Samur Bridge ; escort was provided by 41 of 43 P-51 Mustangs.

Sperry also was the creator of the Ball Turret Gun that was mounted under the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, as commemorated by the film Memphis Belle and the poem The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.

B-24 Liberator | B-24 hit by flak over Italy, 10 April 1945.

A secondary target of the Oil Campaign of World War II, Münster was bombed on October 25, 1944 by 34 diverted B-24 Liberators during a mission to a nearby primary target, the Scholven / Buer synthetic oil plant at Gelsenkirchen.

Piccard developed a frost-free window, that was used on this flight and later by the Navy and Air Force in the B-24 Liberator or B-26 Marauder.

The large gap in the middle of the Atlantic that had been unreachable by aircraft was closed by long range B-24 Liberator aircraft.

Online by mid-1943, the new plant produced hundreds of Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the need for bombardiers was evident, soon after an announcement was made by Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah Davies, Commanding Officer of Midland Army Air Field ( MAAF ), that Midland AAF would be used exclusively to train bombardiers in the AT-11 Kansan for eventual assignment to bomber aircraft such as the B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell, B-26 Marauder and B-29 Superfortress.

Bomber Command used not only British aircraft but also American-built machines such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator ( although less than 2 % of Bomber Command's wartime sorties were flown by US-built aircraft ); in the case of the former they were the first to be put into battle and gave useful information on improvements before the US entered the war.

On 7 April, Eighth Air Force dispatched thirty-two B-17 and B-24 groups and fourteen Mustang groups ( the sheer numbers of attacking Allied aircraft were so large in 1945 that they were now counted by the group ) to targets in the small area of Germany still controlled by the Nazis, hitting the remaining airfields where the Luftwaffe jets were stationed.

A total of around 2, 110 bombers were lost on operations by its fifteen B-24 and six B-17 bombardment groups, while its seven fighter groups claimed a total of 1, 836 enemy aircraft destroyed.

The island was bombed on five occasions in November and December 1943 by B-24 Liberator bombers of the USAAF 7th Air Force.

* April 20 – Led personally by the commander of the Seventh Air Force, Major General Willis H. Hale, 22 U. S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberators from Funafuti bomb and photograph Nauru.

* October 23 – 45 Fifth Air Force B-24 Liberators raid Rabaul, escorted by 47 P-38 Lightnings.

* October 25 – 61 Fifth Air Force B-24 Liberators raid Rabaul, escorted by 50 P-38 Lightnings.

* October 29 – Between 37 and 41 Fifth Air Force B-24 Liberators, escorted by between 53 and 75 P-38 Lightnings, drop 115 tons ( 104, 327 kg ) of bombs on Vunakanau airfield at Rabaul, claiming 45 Japanese aircraft shot down or destroyed on the ground ; the Japanese admit a loss of seven of their planes shot down and three destroyed on the ground.

The U. S. Army Air Forces Fifth Air Force follows up with a strike by 27 B-24 Liberators escorted by 67 P-38 Lighntings on Rabaul town and its wharves.

* November 13 – American preparatory bombing for the amphibious landings in the Gilbert Islands begins with a strike by 17 U. S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberators against Japanese forces on Betio island at Tarawa Atoll.

" At the time of the attack, two P-51 Mustangs were pursuing Ehrler, and he was being fired upon by squadron bombers, taking hits from the tail and waist gunners of B-24, " My Buddie " ( piloted by Lt. Gordon Brock ), who reported pieces of fuselage flying off the jet.

The 93d was a former Eighth Air Force B-24 Liberator group which was assigned to Merced for Boeing B-29 Superfortress training.

Palance's rugged face, which took many beatings in the boxing ring, was said to have become disfigured while bailing out of a burning B-24 Liberator bomber during a training flight over southern Arizona ( where Palance was a student pilot ).

After a brief service as a pilot of C-54 Skymaster cargo planes into Karachi, and over " The Hump " to Kunming after VE Day, he ferried bombers ( B-24 Liberators and B-29 Superfortresses ) from the U. S. mainland to Tinian in the Mariana Islands and into other bases in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

* 2d Lt. George Olesen ( cartoonist ), B-24 pilot 7th Bomb Group

As a B-24 bomber pilot, he flew 62 combat missions, logging more than 500 hours of combat time.

He entered the construction business, then served as a B-24 pilot in World War II, and eventually headed JELCO ( later EMKO ), a major contracting company in Utah.

Shortly after graduating from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Lounsberry served in World War II as a U. S. Air Force B-24 pilot in the Asiatic Pacific Theater, where he received several military honors including the Distinguished Flying Cross, four Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Philippine Liberation Medal.

The B-24 lost altitude rapidly after the pilot was killed, but the wounded copilot regained controlled flight, preventing a stall by putting it into a steep glide to maintain airspeed.

The base began as a pilot transition school for the B-26 Marauder before becoming one of the first B-24 transition schools in operation.