B-24 Liberator Training Deaths
The monumental effort to quickly manufacture and staff over 300,000 aircraft during WW2 resulted in a huge number of deaths and casualties even before any enemy combat. The number of young men killed in Army Air Force training in the United States was nearly 15,000!
From December 1941 to August 1945 the exact number reported in the Army Air Forces Statistical Digest of World War II (declassified on Feb. 23rd, 2011) was 14,903 trainee airmen. Deaths that occurred on single engine trainers, single engine fighters, twin engine fighters, army transport aircraft, dual engine median bombers, and 4 engine heavy bombers was 13,621 young Americans.
This did not include deaths from Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard air training, only Army Air Force.
The total number of airmen killed while on Army Air Force aircraft was 13,621. Bomber aircraft accounted for 54 percent of all aircraft training deaths.
The urgency to design and manufacture huge amounts of planes lead to all kinds of aircraft problems. In parallel, the massive all-out training of airmen led to errors where there was no margin for error. During the process of forming a bombing formation a single error by a pilot would cause a mid-air collision. So, in the case of two B-24 bombers, up to twenty men would be killed. The number airmen that died in US training accidents was 10 times the number of American deaths on D-Day.
And this was just in the continental United States. There were many thousands more wrecks and deaths overseas while on training flights. Looking at totals for the entire war is even more sobering. The U.S. suffered 52,173 aircrew combat losses. But another 25,844 were killed in accidents at home and aboard. Again, between Dec. 1941 to Aug. 1945, 14,903 airmen were killed while training at bases in the continental United States.
Not surprisingly more airmen trainees were killed in B-24 accidents than any other aircraft. The crews knew what they were dealing with, there was a sad reason the B-24 bomber was nicknamed the “flying coffin”.
Throughout the United States dozens and dozens of B-24 Crash Site plaques can be found.
Here are a few of them:
Chappell, Nebraska
Coconino Forest, Arizona
Harmony, New York
Merrian, Kansas
Melbourne, Florida
Covert Township, Kansas