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Show Uncle Sam's Bombers The history of the U. S. army bombing planes begins with the USD-9A De Haviland, finished just too late in 1918 to see action in the First World war. It was powered by a single 400-horsepower Liberty "12" engine, America's outstanding contribution to World war aviation, and had a speed of about 125 miles an hour. It carried a crew of two and a bomb load of 480 pounds. Its range was about 800 miles. While it had a ceiling of more than 18,000 feet, the crude bombsights of the day made bombing at even a few thousand feet pretty much of a hit and miss affair. The first all-American twin-engined twin-engined bomber was the Glenn Martin Mar-tin bomber, designed by the U. S. army air corps engineers for night bombardment over the Western Front during World War I. It had bomb bays which were opened to release its "pay" load of 1,040 pounds. The Glenn Martin weighed more than five tons. This weight is less than that of a modern single-engine single-engine fighter plane, and less than one-fourth the weight' of the B-17. and B-24 of today. A startling development in army bomber design was the high wing monoplane known as Atlantic LB-2. Ahead of its time, and an adaptation adapta-tion for military use of the famous Fokker VII transport, the LB-2 saw service with the army air corps between be-tween 1926 and 1931. It was capable of carrying a bomb load of 2,000 pounds. With the advent of the B-3A the army air corps went back to the biplane design. The B-3A had a speed of 110 miles per hour and a range of about 750 miles. The modern army bomber came of age with the Martin B-10, which attained a speed of more than 200 miles per hour and had a range of in excess of 1,000 miles. In juiy 1934. a flight of ten Martin B-10 bombers flew from Washington. D C. to Fairbanks, Alaska, and' return, re-turn, a total distance of 8.290 miles which was covered in 51 hours and 30 minutes flying time |