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The Douglas B-18 Bolo is sometimes overshadowed by the more famous B-17 and B-24 in most books about US strategic bombers of the 1930s and World War II. However, the most trivial piece of information about this aircraft is the fact that initially had the upper hand over the B-17 when it came to securing sizeable production orders due to its lower unit cost compared to that of early-generation B-17s, although the B-18 prototype was inferior to that of the B-17 in performance. This book does a pretty good job of covering the story of design, development, flight testing, production, and operational career of the B-18 along with relative discussion of a number of derivatives, including the unbuilt XB-22 with R-2600s and the B-23 tactical bomber. Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 17 discuss and chronicle in-depth the operational history of the B-18, including attacks on U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic, the use of B-18s by Canada with the internal Douglas designation DB-280, and the operational career of the B-18 with other foreign customers, including those in Latin America. The story of the B-18's evolutionary development is also defined by a panoply of internal Douglas designations for both built and unbuilt B-18 variants, because whereas the baseline B-18 variant was called DB-1, Douglas allocated the designation DB-2 to one B-18 fitted with a power turret, and a number of evolutionary B-18 variants were proposed as the DB-3, DB-4, and DB-5 (company specification numbers DS-223, DS-224, and DS-225 respectively) for the USAAC Circular Proposal 36-545, with DB-5 being the internal designation for the B-18A variant that differed from the baseline B-18 in having a redesigned nose section. The initial use of DB-4 for one of the unbuilt B-18 proposals with more powerful engines and greater bombload might surprise me at first because DB-4 also was allocated to a heavy bomber derivative of the DC-4E prototype airliner, but it was not rare for Douglas to re-use a number of internal designations, as exemplified by the DC-7 and DC-8 designations being initially used for airliner derivatives of the XB-42 Mixmaster and C-74 Globemaster respectively before being re-used for a DC-6 derivative and the DC-8 jet airliner respectively. The authors also provide extensive details and illustrations of the unbuilt XB-22 derivative of the B-18 for the first time, and they readily contrast this project with the later B-23 tactical bomber that they cover on Chapter 18. As a side note, although the authors briefly state in passing that the unsuccessful Martin 146 competitor to the B-17 and B-18 was erroneously called XB-16 in publications, this is incorrect because the Martin 146 was never given a military designation and XB-16 was allocated to the Martin 145 four-engine strategic bomber project that competed with the Boeing XB-15 but was not built because the XB-15 was chosen for full-scale development. If anyone is interested in US strategic bomber development in the 1930s and World War II, this work is a must-read.Read full review
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