Some 80 years ago this month, a USN PB4Y-1 (B-24) Liberator on an anti-submarine operational flight, 22 May 1944, out of Naval Air Field, Port Lyautey, French Morocco. Note the Portuguese-flagged coaster, navio-motor Costeiro Terceiro (66,96m/ 1.212,87gt/ 9,5 knots; 09/1941) below.
U.S. Navy Photo, via the National Archives. 80-G-227968
As far as I can tell, the above aircraft is likely Consolidated B-24J-20-CO, BuNo 32192 (USAAF 42-73170), of the “Night Owls” of VB-114, one of the 46 Block 20 B-24Js (42-73165 through 42-73214) handed over to the Navy, which represent just a fragment of the more than 900 PB4Y-1 Liberators and PB4Y-2 Privateers that were sent to the blue side during WWII.
PB4Y-1 Liberator from US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-114 on the ramp at Norfolk, Virginia, United States, circa Aug 1943.
As detailed by the Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons, VB-114 was established on 26 August 1943 and was redesignated VPB-114 in October 1944.
80-G-44506: U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Navy Patrol Bomber, PB4Y-1, Liberator. Photograph received July 1944. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (2014/6/5).
VB-114’s first overseas deployment was to NAF Port Lyautey (“Craw Field”) which was an improved 6,000-foot strip taken over in January 1944 from the French military. Operating beside assorted PBY-5 squadrons, VB-114 arrived starting in mid-February 1944, with their heavy equipment arriving later the next month aboard the Barnegat-class small seaplane tender USS Rockaway (AVP 29).
Operating under the control of FAW-15, the squadron suffered from a lack of targets, and, by June 1944, a detachment of six 50 million candle-watt searchlight-equipped birds (the squadron was the only American night-time patrol bomber unit in the Atlantic at the time), was deployed to RAF Dunkeswell, England “to provide low altitude ASW and anti-surface conduct in advance of and during the Normandy Invasion.”
They joined three other Navy Liberator squadrons (VB-103, VB-105, and VB-110) in roaming the Bay of Biscay, with the others roaming during the day and the Owls at night.
U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Consolidated PB4Y-1 “Liberator” Patrol Bomber in flight circa 1943-45. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Accession #: 80-G-K-5175
By mid-July 1944, the elements of VB-114 left in Morocco were shifted to Lagens Field, Terceira Island, Azores, where they were painted in British markings as the Portuguese had agreed to fly RAF aircraft out of the islands, not American.
VPB-114 PB4Y-1 with US and British markings at Lajes Field in 1944
Post-war, VPB-114 shifted operations to Florida and became one of the first hurricane hunter weather squadrons, redesignated VP-HL-6. This endured until 1948 when they went back to being a full-time patrol squadron and were redesignated a final time to become the “Tridents” of VP-26.
Since then, they have flown P-2Vs, assorted P-3B/C Orion, and now P-8 Poseidon.