The C-87 Liberator Express
In response to a request from the Army Air Forces for a heavy bomber with a longer range than the Boeing B-17, Consolidated started designing the B-24 in January 1939. On December 29, 1939, the prototype made its first flight. The Liberators were the most produced American aircraft of World War II, with 18,482 made overall. Every branch of the American military as well as several Allied nations used them. The B-24 Liberator was deployed to every theater of World War II to provide aerial bombing support.
During World War II, one of the largest human or cargo loads of any aircraft currently in production was transported by the C-87 Liberator Express, an airlifter variant of the B-24.
Arthur La Vove piloted a C-87 during the conflict as a “Hump Driver,” transporting people, supplies, and weapons over the Himalayan Mountains between China, India, and Assam. He saw the first B-29 arrive in the CBI (China Burma India) theater while deployed at Chengtu Airfield in China.
An awful lot of airplane
La Vove recalls in his book Hump Drivers;
‘The B-29s were an awful lot of airplane. There had been scads of rumors about them. Long before they appeared in the CBI, the average Hump Driver imagined them in terms of hugeness that resembled fifteenth-century mariners’ descriptions of sea monsters.
‘The project for bringing the Twentieth Air Force’s big babies had been whispered, hush-hush, and top-secret from the very beginning. It had been known variously as the “Matterhorn” and “Twilight” projects. No one, except possibly Tokyo Rose, the Japs, thousands and thousands of runway-building Chinese and Indian coolies, newspaper correspondents, and Air Force brass, knew exactly what was involved.
‘Hump Drivers, based in Jorhat and Tezpur in Lower Assam Valley began to fly their C-87s, loaded with cement mixers, rock crushers, bombs, and gas to the new, 2-mile-long runways that had come into being at the bases that surrounded the ancient capitol of Chengtu.
‘Weather reports were spotty; there were no adequate radio range facilities, traffic was heavy, and the fields were poorly lighted for night operations. But the Drivers put their ships in and then the 29s came along.
‘When they finally did show up, they looked surprisingly small after all the wild talk. Their crews acted like prima donnas at first. They were positive that they were going to win the war all by themselves.
‘Weren’t they going to bomb Japan from bases ‘way back in the guts of China?’
The disastrous beginning of B-29 operations against Japan
La Vove continues;
‘The ’29 crews were cocky—at first. But as time wore on and accidents began to take their toll, the boys quieted down. And the Drivers soon learned that a B-29 operation was a spectacle that could turn marrow into ice water.
‘There were the takeoffs. The Drivers would gather and watch, sweating palms, as the overloaded bombers slowly rose into the dismal overcast that always gave Chengtu a melancholy, tearful aspect.
‘Too often, bombers did not make it. Engine “bugs” hitherto und-tected showed up—and bombers and crews went up in smoke and flame.
‘And when the big boys came back from a mission, it was just as bad. The B-29 landings were a spectacle that perhaps the Romans could have appreciated. The Drivers did not.
‘Afterward—when the bombers were on the ground—the Japanese showed up and Drivers huddled in slit trenches while the maddened Nips tried to pulverize the ships that were damaging their homeland.’
La Vove concludes:
‘But these raids—Jing Bows, they were called—weren’t as bad as the accidents. It was tough, sweating out the B-29’s return; tough to watch one, with one or more feathered props make a wavering turn and suddenly stall and spin in …’
Hump Drivers is published by Schiffer Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Air Force via Cool Old Photos, 7th Fighter.com, C-87s_delivered_Fort_Worth_(colour)_1942.jpg: Hollem, Howard R., photographer and derivative work: Jan Arkesteijn via Wikipedia
