Manual Marauder B-26

Stahlhart papercraft
given up in favour of level-bombing: The new average height for the bomb drops was 10000–15000ft (3048–4573m) This supposedly helped to let the Marauder have the lowest loss rate of all allied planes later on. The Marauder first proved its usefulness during the invasion of normandy, providing tactical support to the advancing troops. Later on, the Marauder became the maintarget of the first german jetfighter, the Me-262. The Royal Air Force also had a lot of problems with the Marauder at the beginning, using it in North africa and the middle east. The Marauder was replacing Bristol Blenheims, which required a huge adaption by the crews, because while the Blenheim was easy to fly, but highly vulnerable, the Marauder could sustain a lot of damage, but was unforgivingwith flying mistakes. The Royal Air Force used the Marauder quite succesfully as a torpedo bomber and Naval Reconnaisance, as well as a interceptor for german transport aircraft crossing the mediterranean. The U.S. Navy used a number of Marauders under the designation JM-1. These machines were stripped of all unrequired equipment, such as turret, machine guns, bomb racks and navigational equipmentto make them as light as possible for their new role as target tugs. The targets were pulled by a steel line and fired upon with paintball munition by Navy fighters. Altogether, over 110000 missions have been flown with the B-26. When the war ended in Europe after the german capitulation, most B-26’s were decomissioned and scrapped. The designation of B-26 was passed on to the Douglas A-26Invader, which was used until long after the Korea war. Only few of the 5266 Marauders build survive until today, and there is only one airworthy Marauder on earth. The most famous Marauder is undoubtedlty the “Flak bait”, which turned out the single aircraft with the most missions flown in world war two. Its forward fuselage section is displayed in the National Air and Space museum in Washington, DCtoday.

Marauder
The Martin Marauder goes back to a request of the U.S. Army Air Corps for a fast medium bomber, made in 1939, still before world war two broke out in Europe. The B-26 was meant to replace the obsolete B-10 and B-18. The design of Glenn L. Martin Company was ordered straight off the drawing board and not even a prototype flew before. The first aircraft to be produced became thequasi-prototype and made it’s maiden flight on November 25th, 1940. The first B26’s were delivered to operational squadrons in 1941, after having been tested at the the airbase Patterson Field, today the site of the U.S. Air Force museum. The Marauder showed a much better performance than its contemporary, the B25 Mitchell, but it’s wings were comparably

Martin B-26/JM-1

small and it had theheaviest weight to wing surface ratio until then. This led to a very long take-off distance amd required fast landing speeds, because the wing would have a stall in too slow speeds, leading to a crash. Another problem were chronic breakdowns of the front landing gear strut, due to bad weight distribution. This again was a result of the new turbo turrets not being installed yet. The worst problemwere those of the propellers and of of sudden loss of power on the engines, especially during take-off. These problems led to numerous crashes, which made the B-26 a feared type among flight students. It led to various nicknames for the B-26 such as “Martin Murderer”, “Widowmaker”, “Flying coffin”, but also “Flying Prostitute”, because the wings were so small and the plane had “no visible means ofsupport”. Since the flight trainign was held in Tampa Bay, Florida, it also led to the phrase “A Marauder a day in Tampa Bay” Modifications on the airframe and im-

proved flight training let the B-26 pilots to be better able to control the plane and less accidents occured. But it was still considered impossible to fly a B-26 with only one engine. This was however disproved by a number of...