The Consolidated C-87 Liberator Express was a transport derivative of the

B-24 Liberator The Consolidated B-24 Liberator is an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. It was known within the company as the Model 32, and some initial production aircraft were laid down as export models desi ...

heavy bomber built during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

for the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

. A total of 287 C-87s were delivered by

Consolidated Aircraft The Consolidated Aircraft Corporation was founded in 1923 in aviation, 1923 by Reuben H. Fleet in Buffalo, New York, the result of the Gallaudet Aircraft Company's liquidation and Fleet's purchase of designs from the Dayton-Wright Company as the ...

from its plant in

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...

. The plant also developed and delivered a USAAF

flight engineer A flight engineer (FE), also sometimes called an air engineer, is a member of an aircraft's flight crew who is responsible for monitoring and operating its complex aircraft systems. In the early era of aviation, the position was sometimes referr ...

trainer designated the AT-22. Other versions included the AAF C-87A, an executive transport version; and the RY, a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

VIP transport. The Navy also ordered the RY-3, a Navy-contracted, single-tail version with an extended fuselage built in San Diego; the AAF also ordered the design under the designation C-87C. Those were cancelled and allotted to a

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

VIP transport designated the Liberator C.IX. The C-109 Liberator was a fuel-transport converted from existing B-24s.https://web.archive.org/web/20090304014706/http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b24_27.html Consolidated C-109

Design and development

The C-87 was hastily designed in early 1942 to fill the need for a heavy cargo and personnel transport with longer range and better high-altitude performance than the

Douglas C-47 Skytrain The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota ( RAF designation) is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II. During the war the C-47 was used for tro ...

, the most widely available

transport aircraft at the time. Production began in 1942. The first C-87 prototype was 41–11608. The design included various modifications, including the elimination of gun turrets and other armament along with the installation of a strengthened cargo floor, including a floor running through the bomb bay. The glazed nose of the bombardier compartment of the B-24 was replaced by a hinged metal cap to allow loading the nose compartment, which in the bomber version can only be reached through a crawlspace under the cockpit floor. A cargo door was added to the port side of the fuselage, just forward of the tail, and a row of windows was fitted along the sides of the fuselage. The C-87 could be fitted with removable seats and racks to carry personnel or litters in place of cargo. In its final configuration, the C-87 could carry between 20 and 25 passengers or of cargo. Because of wartime production bottlenecks and shortages, many C-87 aircraft were fitted with turbosuperchargers producing lower boost pressure and thus unable to sustain power at the same altitudes as those fitted to B-24s destined for combat use, and ceiling and climb rate were accordingly reduced.

C-87A VIP transport

In 1942 and 1943, several C-87 aircraft were converted into VIP luxury passenger transports by adding insulation, padded seats, dividers, and other accommodations. The modified aircraft, designated C-87A, could carry 16 passengers. One C-87A, serial ''41-24159'', was converted in 1943 to a presidential VIP transport, the ''Guess Where II'', intended to carry President Franklin D. Roosevelt on international trips. Had it been accepted, it would have been the first aircraft to be used in presidential service, i.e. the first

Air Force One Air Force One is the official air traffic control-designated Aviation call signs, call sign for a United States Air Force aircraft carrying the president of the United States. The term is commonly used to denote U.S. Air Force aircraft modifie ...

. However, the

Secret Service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For i ...

, after a review of the controversial safety record, flatly refused to approve the ''Guess Where II'' for presidential carriage. The ''Guess Where II'' was used to transport senior members of the Roosevelt administration and in March 1944, flew

Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( ; October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D ...

on a goodwill tour of several Latin American countries.Dorr 2002, p. 134.

XC-87B

A damaged B-24D, 42-40355, became what is referred to as the XC-87B with an extended fuselage and low-altitude engine packages. This transport, named ''Pinocchio'', was later converted to a single tailfin with PB4Y-2 Privateer-type engine packages. This should not be confused with the cancelled XC-87B, a proposed an armed transport version of the C-87.

Operational history

Most C-87s were operated by the U.S. Air Transport Command and flown by formerly civilian crews from U.S. civil transport carriers. The planes were initially used on transoceanic routes too long to be flown by the C-47. After the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942, the C-87 was used for flying war material from India to American and Chinese forces over "

The Hump The Hump was the name given by Allies of World War II, Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from British Raj, India to Republic of China (1912- ...

", the treacherous air route that crossed the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

. When the route was established, the C-87 was the only readily available American transport with high-altitude performance good enough to fly this route while carrying a large cargo load. The C-87 was plagued by numerous problems and suffered from a poor reputation among its crews. Veteran airline pilot and author Ernest K. Gann, in his 1961 memoir '' Fate is the Hunter'', wrote: "They were an evil bastard contraption, nothing like the relatively efficient B-24 except in appearance." Complaints centered around electrical and hydraulic system failures in extreme cold at high altitudes, a disconcertingly frequent loss of all cockpit illumination during takeoffs, and a flight deck heating system that either produced stifling heat or did not function at all. The C-87 did not climb well when heavily loaded, a dangerous characteristic when flying out of the unimproved, rain-soaked airfields of India and China; many were lost on takeoff with the loss of just a single engine. Gann's book recounts a near-collision with the

Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal ( ; ; ) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was commissioned in 1631 by the fifth Mughal Empire, Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his belo ...

after takeoff in a heavily loaded C-87 when full flaps had to be hastily deployed to increase the aircraft's altitude to avoid the edifice. The aircraft's auxiliary long-range fuel tanks were linked by improvised and often leaky fuel lines that crisscrossed the crew compartment, choking flight crews with noxious

gasoline Gasoline ( North American English) or petrol ( Commonwealth English) is a petrochemical product characterized as a transparent, yellowish, and flammable liquid normally used as a fuel for spark-ignited internal combustion engines. When for ...

fumes and creating an explosion hazard. The C-87 also had a tendency to enter an uncontrollable stall or spin when confronted with even mild icing conditions, a frequent occurrence over the Himalayas. Gann said they "could not carry enough ice to chill a highball". The aircraft could also become unstable in flight if its

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the barycenter or balance point) is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For ...

shifted due to improper cargo loading. This longitudinal instability arose from the aircraft's hasty conversion from bomber to cargo transport. Unlike a normal cargo transport, which was designed from the start with a contiguous cargo compartment with a safety margin for fore-and-aft loading variations, the bomb racks and bomb bays built into the B-24 design were fixed in position, greatly limiting the aircraft's ability to tolerate improper loading. This problem was exacerbated by wartime exigencies and the failure of USAAF Air Transport Command to instruct loadmasters in the C-87's peculiarities. The design's roots as a bomber are also considered culpable for frequently collapsing nosegear; its strength was adequate for an aircraft that dropped its payload in flight before landing on a well-maintained runway, but it proved marginal for an aircraft making repeated hard landings on rugged unimproved airstrips while heavily loaded. Despite its shortcomings and unpopularity among its crews, the C-87 was valued for the reliability of its Pratt & Whitney engines, superior speed that enabled it to mitigate significantly the effect of head and cross winds, a service ceiling that allowed it to surmount most weather fronts, and range that permitted its crews to fly "pressure-front" patterns that chased favorable winds. The C-87 was never fully displaced on the air routes by the

Douglas C-54 Skymaster The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilia ...

and Curtiss C-46 Commando, which offered similar performance combined with greater reliability and more benign flight characteristics. Some surviving C-87 aircraft were converted into VIP transports or flight crew trainers, and several others were sold to the Royal Air Force.

Variants

;C-87 :USAAF transport variant of the B-24D with seats for 25 passengers, 278 built.Andrade 1987, pp. 42, 82, 87. ;C-87A :VIP version for 16 passengers, three for the USAAF and three to the United States Navy as RY-1. ;C-87B :Proposed armed variant, not built. ;XC-87B Conversions with stretched forward compartment and LB-30 type low altitude power packages. Later PB4Y-2 type power packages and single tail (see RY-3/C-87C). 42–40355. (Total: 1 conversion) ;C-87C :Proposed USAAF variant of the RY-3, designation not used. ;RY-1 :United States Navy designation for three former USAAF C-87As fitted for 16 passengers. ;RY-2 :Five former USAAF C-87s fitted for 20 passengers, a further 15 were cancelled. ;RY-3 :A C-87 with the single tail and seven foot fuselage stretch of the PB4Y-2 Privateer. 39 were built, and were used by the RAF Transport Command No. 231 Squadron, U.S. Marine Corps, and one was used by the RCAF. ;AT-22 :Five C-87s used for flight engineer training, later designated TB-24D. ; Liberator C.VII :Royal Air Force designation for C-87s supplied under Lend Lease ;Liberator C.IX :Royal Air Force designation for 26 RY-3s supplied under Lend-Lease. The designation meaning "Cargo (aircraft) Mark 9"

Accidents and incidents

The Aviation Safety Network, part of the

Flight Safety Foundation The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit, international organization concerning research, education, advocacy, and communications in the field of aviation safety. FSF brings together aviation professionals to help solve safety problem ...

, records 150

hull loss A hull loss is an aviation accident that damages the aircraft beyond economic repair, resulting in a total loss. The term also applies to situations where the aircraft is missing, the search for its wreckage is terminated, or the wreckage is ...

accidents involving the C-87 or the C-109 occurring between 1942 and 1964. On 30 November 1943, a C-87 with a crew of four plus a passenger ran out of fuel flying from

Kunming Kunming is the capital and largest city of the province of Yunnan in China. The political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province, Kunming is also the seat of the provincial government. During World War II, Kunming was a Ch ...

, China to

Jorhat Jorhat ( /) is a major city in Upper Assam division, Upper Assam and among the fastest growing urban centres in the state of Assam in India. Etymology Jorhat ("jor" means twin and "hat" means market) means two hats or mandis - "Masorhaat" and ...

, India, when it was blown off-course by strong wind. All five aboard the plane landed near Tsetang,

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

, and became some of the first Americans to visit

Lhasa Lhasa, officially the Chengguan District of Lhasa City, is the inner urban district of Lhasa (city), Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, Southwestern China. Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining ...

. The worst accident took place 25 July 1944. All 27 on board USAAF C.87 ''41-11706'' were killed when it crashed on Florida Island in the south-west Pacific; the crew were civilian employees of Consairway and the passengers were high-ranking British and American officers, including Royal Air Force

Air Commodore Air commodore (Air Cdre or Air Cmde) is an air officer rank used by some air forces, with origins from the Royal Air Force. The rank is also used by the air forces of many countries which have historical British influence and it is sometimes ...

Isaac John Fitch. The next year, in July 1945 a Liberator C.VII (the British designation for the C-87) operated by the

bound for

Manus Island Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth-largest island in Papua New Guinea, with an area of , measuring around . Manus Island is covered in rugged jungles w ...

failed to gain altitude after taking off from Sydney's now non-existent runway 22, struck trees and crashed into the ground in Brighton-Le-Sands. The aircraft exploded on impact, killing all 12 passengers and crew on board. The victims were from the British, Australian and New Zealand armed forces. Another notable accident took place on 15 April 1957 when C-87 ''XA-KUN'', operated by TAMSA (Transportes Aéreos Mexicanos SA), crashed after take-off from Mérida-Rejon Airport, killing all on board, including the famous Mexican actor and singer

Pedro Infante Pedro Infante Cruz (; 18 November 1917 – 15 April 1957) was a Mexican ranchera singer and actor whose career spanned the golden age of Mexican cinema. Infante was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and raised in nearby Guamúchil. He died on 15 Apri ...

Operators

; *Compañia Boliviana de Aviacion ; *

Republic of China Air Force The Republic of China Air Force ( Chinese, 中華民國空軍), or the ROCAF; known colloquially as the Taiwanese Air Force ( Chinese, 臺灣空軍) by Western or mainland Chinese media, or commonly referred as the National Military Air Force ...

Three C-87 aircraft were attached to the 8th Bomber Group as transports. ; *

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the air force, air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during armed conflicts. It was officially established on 8 Octob ...

Two C-87 aircraft recovered from an aircraft dump in

Kanpur Kanpur (Hindustani language, Hindustani: ), originally named Kanhapur and formerly anglicized as Cawnpore, is the second largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Uttar Pradesh after Lucknow. It was the primary ...

formed No.102 Survey Flight."Liberator."
''bharat-rakshak.com.'' Retrieved: 9 December 2010. ; *TAMSA (Transportes Aéreos Mexicanos SA) ; *

** No. 231 Squadron RAF ; *

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for conducting expeditionar ...

Specifications (C-87)

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Andrade, John. ''U.S. Military Aircraft Designations and Serials since 1909''. Hinckley, UK: Midland Counties Publications, 1979. . * Baugher, Joe
"Consolidated C-87 Liberator Express".
''Joe Baugher's Encyclopedia of American Military Aircraft''. Retrieved: 25 April 2006. * Baugher, Joe

''Joe Baugher's Encyclopedia of American Military Aircraft''. Retrieved: 5 September 2008. * Dorr, Robert F. ''Air Force One''. New York: Zenith Imprint, 2002. . * Gann, Ernest K. '' Fate is the Hunter''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961. .