KEESLER FIELD, MISS.—Grease Monkey, a venerable B-24 training plane that ended its flying days last May when it caught fire, is now used here in the last phase of fight-procedure instruction of the AAF Training Command’s B-24 Liberator mechanics course. It has become an outdoor classroom in “ditching” a B-24 in crash landing on water.
The plane, already stripped of engines, wing tips, flaps and half the tail assembly, was stripped of all other salvageable parts and rolled out onto a submerged pier in the Back Bay waters of Biloxi at Keesler Field. There the EM mechanics, after lectures and demonstrations on the use of life-saving devises, take their duty positions inside the Grease Monkey. The EM teacher then sounds off the ditching procedure for a crash water landing, and the mechanics respond as though their lives were actually in danger.
At “Tail down” the men brace themselves for the first landing shock. At “Nose down” they await the second shock of impact. A third command is given to indicate that the plane has hit the water and the men make immediate exits through the plane’s escape doors. As they hit the water in their Mae Wests they inflate two life rafts and paddle away from the crashed plane. It’s all part of the training EM mechanics get.
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I cannot think of a worst aircraft to ditch than the B-24! That was on my mind as I flew our B-24 to England across the South Atlantic Ocean from Belem, Brazil to Dakar, Morocco in April, 1944.