This series is dedicated to the gallant service performed by the brave airmen of World War 2 who risked all so that we may enjoy our American way of life. The phrase “Big Brother, Little Brother” refers to the way the heavy bomber and fighter escort aircraft pilots called each other on the radio chatter.
On a personal note, my father “John” served as a flight engineer on a B-25 Mitchell out of Italy in 1944 and 1945. He made it back alive, as did my father-in-law “Danny” who served as a belly gunner on a B-24 Liberator out of Libya. “Danny” was one of the few airmen who flew in both Ploesti oil field raids to Romania (June 1942 and August 1943) and did so without so much as a scratch. He flew his 25 missions and returned to the US as a gunnery instructor (Lead, Dammit, Lead!).
Finding all the caches will display a GeoArt form of the Big Brother, Little Brother relationship on your map. The caches were not meant to be difficult to find. If you can’t find a cache, it’s probably missing. Send me a picture of the location by email, I’ll accept the find and replace the cache.
B-32 Dominator
The Consolidated B-32 Dominator was a heavy bomber made for United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and has the distinction of being the last Allied aircraft to be engaged in combat during World War II. It was developed in parallel with the Boeing B-29 Superfortress as a fallback design should the Superfortress prove unsuccessful. Originally, the Army Air Forces intended the B-32 as a "fallback" design to be used only if the B-29 program fell significantly behind in its development schedule. As development of the B-32 became seriously delayed this plan became unnecessary due to the success of the B-29.
Initial plans to use the B-32 to supplement the B-29 in re-equipping B-17 and B-24 groups before redeployment of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces to the Pacific were stymied when only five production models had been delivered by the end of 1944, by which time full B-29 operations were underway in the Twentieth Air Force.
It only reached units in the Pacific during the summer of 1945, and subsequently only saw limited combat operations against Japanese targets before the end of the war. Most of the extant orders of the B-32 were cancelled shortly thereafter and only 118 B-32s of all types were built.
Consolidated B-32 Dominator Technicals
General characteristics-
Crew: 10
Length: 82 ft 1 in
Wingspan: 135 ft 0 in
Height: 32 ft 2 in
Wing area: 1,422 ft²
Empty weight: 60,278 lb
Loaded weight: 100,800 lb
Max. takeoff weight: 123,250lb
Powerplant: 4 × Wright R-3350-23A 18-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, 2,200 hp each
Performance-
Maximum speed: 357 mph at 30,000 ft
Cruise speed: 290 mph
Range: 3,800 mi
Service ceiling: 30,700 ft
Rate of climb: 1,050 ft/min
Armament-
Guns: 10× .50 in machine guns
Bombs: 20,000 lb
Survivors
No examples remain of a B-32. Most production aircraft were delivered incomplete from the factory and flown directly to Davis-Monthan Field, Arizona for storage. Many were offered for sale by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation but no offers were received. A number of B-32 heavy bombers were flown to the Walnut Ridge Army Airfield, in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, where they were scrapped by the Texas Railway Equipment Company, which bought 4,871 of the various aircraft stored at Walnut Ridge, including fighters and bombers of differing types. Most B-32s were scrapped by 1947.
B-32-1-CF, s/n 42-108474 was earmarked for display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force (at the time, the Air Force Museum) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, but was declared surplus and scrapped at Davis-Monthan in August 1949.
One of the only portions of a B-32 surviving is a wing panel removed from a static test model and erected at the Montgomery Memorial near San Diego, California as a monument to aviation pioneer John J. Montgomery. The National Warplane Museum in Horseheads, NY has a B-32 nose turret that was acquired in 1997.
A flight jacket belonging to a member of the 386th BS, with a B-32 hand-painted on the back, is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.