More C-22 Trivia
Correction:
After watching the clip above, I’m reminded that the planes in the book and film weren’t B-17 long-range bombers. They were Martin B-26 twin engine, medium-range bombers. This is significant in a book about the insanity of the vast, and sometimes corrupt, military bureaucracy in WWII.
This aircraft, once it made it to the war theater, was a deadly product of USAAF bureaucracy—deadly to the men who flew her. USAAF officers and crew labeled her, variously, the Flying Coffin, the Widowmaker and the Baltimore Whore because so many crewmen lost their lives flying her before ever reaching target.
The first runs of this plane out of Martin’s plant in Baltimore were excellent and lived up to engineering expectations.
But the Army Air Corp bureaucracy decided she didn’t have enough defense armament. So, against all Martin (later Martin-Marietta, today a major defense contractor) engineering advice, the Army loaded her up with dual .50 and .30 cal machine guns plus ammo, weighed her down and disturbed her center of gravity toward the nose. After the refit, she had a habit of crashing on takeoff. But the Army insisted on the armament anyway.
Nobody wanted to be assigned to B-26 crew training. It was considered a death sentence.
I spent my early teen years in Florida’s Tampa Bay area and fished the waters of Tampa Bay. I met old, gnarly fisherman who were too old or otherwise 4F to fight in WWII. They stayed behind and fished the TB. On the Tampa side of the bay, where the international airport is now, was Drew Field. It was a USAAF B-26 flight training school during WWII. They told me stories. So many new crew went down into the water in those planes on takeoff that the saying was “A plane a day in Tampa Bay.” (Google that phrase.) The Army even had a bounty for fishing crew out of the bay. Some said that they made more money fishing crew out of the bay than they did fishing during the war.
Senator Harry S. Truman (D – Missouri), later VP and POTUS after FDR’s death, was head of the Senate investigation committee on waste and corruption in the War Industry. He went to TB, then to the sister school in the Everglades and his report attempted to correct this Army stupidity. But by the time it took the bureaucracy to act on his committee’s, and Martin’s, recommendations, the war was almost over.
The amazing thing about Heller’s work is that he was able to portray all the shit these guys had to go through, and the surrealism that became their lives, as a hilarious comedy. These poor bastards couldn’t determine if the Nazis or their own general staff were the deadlier enemy. Both the book and the film are one of the finest works of dark comedy ever published.
The book is about the absurdity of men at war and the B-26 was a perfect example of that absurdity.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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