Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Any PB4Y-2 Privateer junkies here?

I'm posting this on behalf of my wife's uncle. His dad was a bombadier on Privateers during WWII and is always looking for anyone interested in these planes, or anyone who has a relative who crewed on these birds. The Privateer was a single tail version of the B-24 Liberator with a lengthened section of the fuselage forward of the wing. It was used for coastal patrol and submarine intervention. Does anyone have a friend or relative with information or who served on these planes?

I always thought it was a better aircraft than the B-24, but I have nothing to back that up. It's certainly a better looking aircraft. I've seen ONE, it was on the airshow circuit and came to the Clark County Airshow several years running. It was famous for hauling Churchill on several overseas trips during the War, beyond that, I don't really recall much about it. They were popular as water bombers during fire season out West, too.

I was too busy drooling over all the Mustangs that show brought to town. I got to meet Chuck Yeager,Pete Petersen, Bud Anderson, and a couple others that flew together during the War, so that had me preoccupied.

Ratsmacker-thanks for your reply. I'll pass your info on to my wife's uncle. He would be interested in knowing that there was recently an airworthy Privateer still flying. We were just talking about this last night and he was under the impression there were currently no airworthy Privateers still flying. He reads everything he can find on these birds and someday may write a book on them. The closest thing to an airworthy Privateer he was aware of was one being restored out on the West Coast somewhere that got flooded during one of the hurricanes, but he said that one's supposed to be quite a ways out as a project at this time.

http://www.warbirdalley.com/pb4y2.htm


This place has a lot of short-term info, but nothing really deep. Still, it's helpful and has some great photos, and links to other sites referencing those aircraft and others. If your wife's uncle hasn't found it yet, he'll get some good info there. I didn't realize they used it in Korea, for example, or used it as a radar aircraft, but apparently is was useful for many years after WWII.

Nice link. Never heard of the Privateer till today.

I remember one water bomber bird crashing a few years ago, maybe back in 2002, (when they quit using them), and thinking what a shame it was to see an old warbird like that being dumped. I recall seeing pictures of it dropping retardant on fires out West, and marveling that it was still in use.

They made 739 of them, not many, but a lot more than I thought.


Check in here http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ now and then, too, I posted a request for info, those guys have an encyclopedic knowledge of warbirds of all kinds, especially the more obscure ones.