| B-18 Bolo |
Website Links For Bolo |
Information AboutB-18 Bolo |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT B-18 BOLO | |
| propeller aircraft | |
| u.s. bomber aircraft 1930-1939 | |
| b-18 bolo | |
| douglas aircraft | |
|
, Atwater, California'']] The Douglas B-18 Bolo was a United States Army Air Corps and Royal Canadian Air Force Bomber of the late 1930s and early 1940s based on the Douglas DC-2 . HISTORY In 1934 , the United States Army Air Corps put out a request for a bomber with double the bomb load and range of the Martin B-10 , which was just entering service as the Army's standard bomber. In the evaluation at Wright Field the following year, Douglas showed its DB-1. It competed with the Boeing ''Model 299'' (later the B-17 Flying Fortress ) and Martin ''Model 146''. While the Boeing design was clearly superior, the crash of the B-17 prototype (caused by taking off with the controls locked) removed it from consideration. During the depths of the Great Depression , the lower price of the DB-1 ($58,500 vs. $99,620 for the Model 299) also counted in its favor. The Douglas design was ordered into immediate production in January 1936 as the B-18. The DB-1 design was essentially the same as the DC-2 , with several modifications. The wingspan was 4.5 ft (1.4 m) greater. The fuselage was deeper, to better accommodate bombs and the six-member crew; the wings were fixed in the middle of the cross-section rather than to the bottom, but this was due to the deeper fuselage. Added armament included nose, dorsal, and ventral Gun turrets. The bomber used two Wright R-1820 -45 ‘Cyclone 9’s, of 930 hp (694 kW) each. The initial contract called for 133 B-18s (including DB-1), using Wright radials. The last B-18 of the run, designated DB-2 by the company, had a power-operated nose turret. This design did not become standard. Additional contracts in 1937 (177 aircraft) and 1938 (40 aircraft) were for the B-18A, which had the bombardier’s position further forward over the nose-gunner's station. The B-18A also used more powerful Wright R-1820 -53 engines of 1,000 hp (746 kW). By 1940 , most Army bomber squadrons were equipped with B-18s or B-18As. Many of those in the 5th Bomb Group and 11th Bomb Group in Hawaii were destroyed in the Attack On Pearl Harbor . B-17 s 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. Two aircraft were transferred to Força Aérea Brasileira in 1942. The Royal Canadian Air Force acquired 20 B-18As (designated the ''Douglas Digby Mark I''), and used them for patrols also. Bolos and Digbys sank four submarines during the course of the war. SURVIVING AIRCRAFT Only five B-18s still exist, preserved in museums in the United States:
VARIANTS AND DESIGN STAGES
OPERATORS
SPECIFICATIONS (B-18A)
REFERENCE
EXTERNAL LINKS RELATED CONTENT
|
|
|