Under the terms of the Liberator Production Pool agreement, the designation B-24E was assigned to the version of the Liberator that was built by the Ford Motor Company as primary contractor at its Willow Run, Michigan plant. As part of its participation in the Liberator Production Pool, Ford also provided B-24E components for assembly at Consolidated/Fort Worth and at Douglas/Tulsa.
The last of the B-24Es came off the Willow Run assembly line in mid-1943. A total of 801 B-24Es were built. 490 of these were built at Willow Run, with 167 being assembled in Tulsa and 144 at Fort Worth
The Ford-built B-24Es were all powered by Pratt & Whitney R-1830-65 engines. Externally, the B-24E was identical to the late production B-24D with the three-gun nose modification. However, the Ford-built B-24E did not carry the belly turret of the late B-24D. Instead, it had a single 0.50-inch machine gun in the tunnel position. Internally, the B-24E had numerous changes designed to make the Liberator more adaptable to mass production at Ford by engineers and workers who had been originally trained for automobile production
Block E-10 introduced a new nose and with it, slight variation in the "three in the nose" armament mounts and locations. The E-10 and onward used a different nose piece structure with a bomb aiming flat panel in the lower nose replacing the "grin-like" framing of the D series and earlier E. The center machine gun was mounted in the upper flat, not in the apex as on the D series. And the port side cheek gun mount was through the skin under a smaller window than in the D series.
Because of production delays encountered at Willow Run as a result of the inevitable difficulties and snags involved in the adaptation of automobile manufacturing techniques to aircraft, the B-24E was largely obsolescent by the time that it began to roll off the production lines, and most were relegated to training roles in the United States and few ever saw combat.
160 B-24Es were modified as gunnery trainers for B-29 crews and had a General Electric fire control system installed.
B-24E-15-FO 42-7127 was experimentally modified to have a unique system of barbettes on each side of the fuselage, controlled from adjacent observation blisters and each carrying two 0.50-inch machine guns. This innovation was not adopted as standard.
B-24E Serials:
41-28409/28416 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-1-DT Liberator 41-28417/28444 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-10-DT Liberator 41-28445/28476 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-15-DT Liberator 41-28477/28500 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-20-DT Liberator 41-28501/28573 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-25-DT Liberator 41-29007/29008 Douglas-Tulsa B-24E-DT Liberator 41-29009/29023 Consolidated B-24E-10-CF Liberator 41-29024/29042 Consolidated B-24E-15-CF Liberator 41-29043/29061 Consolidated B-24E-20-CF Liberator 41-29062/29115 Consolidated B-24E-25-CF Liberator 42-6976/7005 Ford B-24E-1-FO Liberator 42-7006/7065 Ford B-24E-5-FO Liberator 42-7066/7122 Ford B-24E-10-FO Liberator 42-7123/7171 Ford B-24E-15-FO Liberator 42-7172/7229 Ford B-24E-20-FO Liberator 42-7230/7464 Ford B-24E-25-FO Liberator 42-7770 Ford B-24E-FO Liberator 42-64395/64431 Consolidated B-24E-25-CF Liberator
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