In 1948 Captain Jamshed ("Jimmy") Munshi made his first flight in a Consolidated B-24 'Liberator' bomber from Kanpur, India to the city of Bangalore in the southern part of the country. Details of the story behind this flight plus information to fly the simulation in MSFS are given below.

The Background Story

The Consolidated B-24L 'Liberator' GR VIII now sits in the vast working and storage space called the Reserve Hangar of the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa, well protected from the elements (photo below, right). It is surrounded by many other aircraft, each with their own story to tell, each in a different stage of restoration. Sixty five years ago this B-24 was stored in quite different conditions.

Produced for the Royal Air Force under the Lend-Lease program of World War II, it was delivered on 30 July 1945 to India, serving with No 355 Squadron. It soon ended up with over 100 other surplus Liberators in a storage and disposal area called '322 Maintenance Unit', Chakeri Field, near Kanpur (then called Cawnpore) in Northern India. What happened next is a little vague.

The terms of Article 4 of the USA Lend Lease Act are very clear: the RAF could not "transfer title to or possession of such defense article ...or permit its use by anyone not an officer, employee, or agent of such foreign government". In plain language, in order to meet the Lend-Lease obligations before leaving India, the RAF had to render their Liberators unserviceable if they did not retain them in British possession.

According to the 'unofficial' web site of the Indian Air Force Bharat Rakshak and other sources, after stripping guns and other parts, many of the aircraft left at Chakeri had holes made in their fuselages, their wings and tails were damaged by bulldozers, they had sand poured into their engines and their magnetos were removed. However the degree of '[un]serviceability' varied. The RAF ground crews that had maintained the Liberator squadrons had little appetite for their destruction and were also naturally focused on their own demobilisation and transfer home now that the war was over. Nevertheless, the Bharat Rakshak account makes it clear that an assessment by US officials confirmed that the Lend-Lease obligations had been met. The subsequent restoration describe below was due to the ingenuity, energy and resourcefulness of the Indian personnel.

From its experience in the post-partition war with Pakistan after WWII, India needed heavy aircraft/bomber squadrons. When negotiations with USA and British authorities failed to reach an appropriate supply agreement for new aircraft, the Indian Air Force focused on the potential resource of the Chakeri field. The aircraft at Chakeri had been sitting there some time. Kanpur is described in Wikipedia as having "a humid subtropical climate, ... [it] features long and very hot summers, mild and relatively short winters, dust storms and a monsoon season", i.e. not the ideal storage 'boneyard' for aircraft.

A team of Indian engineers led by a Mr. Yelappa from Hindustan Aircraft Ltd. (HAL) assessed then prepared in the field 42 of the B-24 aircraft left at Chakeri (photo below, right) to a standard they thought sufficient to be ferried south (map, below, left) for comprehensive refit in Bangalore, HAL's base. Hindustan Aircraft Ltd. was then an aviation service company and is now known as Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, an aeronautic and aerospace manufacturer.

India, as a newly independent country, had no trained B-24 pilots. Captain Jamshed "Jimmy" Munshi was an experienced DC-3 pilot who had recently become the Chief Test Pilot for HAL. According to Bharat Rakshak, he did not have any time in four-engined aircraft before this first ferry flight but had some familiarity with Pratt & Whitney engines from his DC-3 experience. His pilot's manual for the B-24 was reportedly put together by combing through the "wrecks" and combining remnants of discarded manuals. Apparently (and understandably) no-one was comfortable with retracting the undercarriage before full servicing - so he flew the B-24s with the undercarriage down, a journey of 800 miles.

At Bangalore, these aircraft were restored to operational status, providing the Indian Air Force with a heavy aircraft fleet for the next twenty years.

In 1967, in a 'museum exchange' agreement between Canada and India, one of these aircraft (HE-773 'M') was exchanged for a Canadian Lysander. HE-773 then had a far longer sequence of ferry flights to Ottawa, its current home, becoming the Liberator GR VIII on display at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum.

Other Liberators that are still around today that were at Chakeri Field include the Collings Foundation B-24J and the RAF Museum B-24L. Of more than 18,000 Consolidated B-24s manufactured there are now but a small handful left, carefully restored and much valued as part of aviation history. Captain Munshi's ferry flights had a significant role in the continuing life of some of these veterans. I hope you enjoy this simulation.

The Flight

This ferry flight of 5 1/2 hours is not a long flight for a lightly-loaded Liberator, so adjust fuel accordingly. The route from Chakeri airbase I chose is almost directly south to the highlands around Bangalore (airport elevation 2913 feet), passing over the cities of Nagpur and Hyderabad. I have no details of the original route but it was reported to be direct, and the route I chose also provides the maximum opportunity for diversion to airfields en route in the event of problems.

Waypoints: VICX KKJ NNP HHY SAI VOBG

I flew this route in both FS2004 and FSX using aircraft from the FlightSim.Com and Virtavia/Alphasim freeware libraries: B24_LIB9.ZIP in FS2004 and the B-24 from the B24B26.ZIP package in FSX. I also liked the C-87 (cargo version of the B-24) package (C-87_LIBERATOR_EXPRESS.ZIP) in FS2004, which has an excellent 2D panel set and good accompanying documentation.

I flew south with the undercarriage down at 155 mph, the maximum 'wheels down' speed (flight time 5 hours 40 minutes). For comparison, I repeated the trip at normal speeds and operating altitudes in the C-87 'Liberator Express' with a flight time of just under 4 hours.

For FSX I used default scenery. For FS2004, I added Keith Sebastian's India mesh (INDMESHA.ZIP). The Indian landscape you cross includes cities, roads and large river and reservoir systems that can be tracked on Google maps. The various airports en route are also easily identifiable if the weather is clear.

Note that Bangalore airport (as of 2008) is new - the Begaluru International Airport north of the city. The old municipal airport VOBG is standard in FS2004 and FSX and this is the destination for this flight - it is now known as HAL airport or Hindustan airport. There your B-24 can go through a full maintenance overhaul!

Acknowledgements

I appreciate the considerable assistance given to me by the staff of the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa regarding information about and access to Liberator GR VIII (see www.aviation.technomuses.ca for more information about the aircraft and the museum).

The article here by Gp. Capt. Kapil Bhargava (Ret'd) on 'India's reclaimed bombers' was the original 'spark' for creating this flight simulation and provided much of the story. More details on the Liberators at Chakeri is given here and the story of GR VIII and its much longer ferry flight from India to Canada is here.

Allan Jones
allanj12@gmail.com