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The B-24G was the designation given to B-24 Liberators built by North American at Dallas. It would become the third version of the aircraft to be built with a nose turret, after the experimental XB-41 “escort fighter” and the B-24H built at Fort Worth. Production began in 1943, and the first aircraft was delivered in March 1943, but initial product at Dallas was slow.
Part of this must have been due to a major design change that took place after the first 25 aircraft had been built. These early aircraft had been virtually identical to late production B-24Ds with a Sperry ball turret and a Sperry A-5 automatic pilot as standard, but starting with the 26th aircraft the B-24G was built with a power operated nose turret. This gave the B-24G four turrets – dorsal, ventral, tail and nose.
That first aircraft with a nose turret was delivered on 3 November 1943, and after that production began to speed up, reaching a rate of one a day in January 1944. A total of 430 B-24Gs were built, 405 of them with the nose turret. During the production run the engine was changed from the R-1830-43 to the R-1830-65. The majority of these aircraft were used to equip the 15th Air Force, fighting in the Mediterranean.
Consolidated B-24 Liberator (Crowood Aviation), Martin W. Bowman. A well balanced book that begins with a look at the development history of the B-24, before spending nine out of its ten chapters looking at the combat career of the aircraft in the USAAF, the US Navy and the RAF.
