As the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) enters its 66th year of gathering, restoring, and showing the amazing and rare aircraft of World War II, one of its early acquisitions stands out as the oldest Consolidated Liberator in existence.
Known familiarly as Diamond Lil, and sometimes called by its Royal Air Force (RAF) serial number AM927, this warbird has undergone successive restorations that helped revert it from a modified transport to the bomber it was intended to be.
In 1940 France ordered B-24s to bolster French opposition to Germany. The fall of France to German forces in mid-1940 made the French Liberator order moot, and Great Britain stepped up to acquire the undelivered French bombers. The Liberator now flown by the CAF was one of the British batch.
To complicate the pedigree even further, the U.S. Army Air Corps allocated some of its intended B-24A Liberator production run to the British in 1940. This had the dual effect of speeding deliveries for England, and giving the Air Corps a trade for later Liberator production slots that would have some configuration updates.
So the Liberator celebrated by the CAF was technically a Liberator I in British parlance. It was labeled LB-30B in a Consolidated aircraft nomenclature system, which also called this batch of aircraft B-24A conversions, according to Liberator historian Allan G. Blue.
Given the Royal Air Force serial number AM927, this Liberator was accepted by the British Air Ministry in May 1941.
Instead of launching across the Atlantic to bolster British combat forces in Europe, AM927 went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where TWA had a contract to instruct RAF pilots, according to CAF officials. There, in mid-1941, AM927 locked its right mainwheel brake on landing, leading to an excursion from the runway that seriously damaged the nose and bomb bay areas. Barely a month old, AM927 was out of the fight as far as the British were concerned.
Consolidated worked on the damaged Liberator airframe for the last half of 1941, ferrying AM927 back to the factory at San Diego that December, according to Commemorative Air Force documentation. The British lent AM927 to Consolidated for the duration of the war.
The San Diego plant at Lindbergh Field bustled with creative customized Liberator variants as the cubic volume of the airframe was recognized for its transport potential.
AM927 had its original bomb bay replaced with new belly fuselage structure. The nose was now a blunt but well-shaped aluminum cap instead of a bombardier’s greenhouse. Windows and seats were added, and this Liberator flew on Consolidated wartime business as a company transport for people and vital parts, for awhile in olive drab and gray camouflage with U.S. Army Air Forces insignia.
The engineers at Consolidated, backed by the factory’s vast production capabilities, were not hesitant about modifying existing older Liberator airframes using evolving designs on newer machines on the assembly line.
AM927’s story took another turn when the nose was stretched by nearly three feet, incorporating a fuselage lengthening that became standard on Liberator bombers, starting with the British Liberator II variant and all U.S. B-24s from the B-24C onward.
At some point AM927 received outward-opening nosewheel doors and a knife-edge windscreen and canopy enclosure with fewer aluminum ribs to obstruct pilot field of vision. The simplified canopy was similar in appearance to the late-war canopies applied by Ford to its B-24 Liberators built under contract.
Early Liberators employed engine cowlings and nacelles that were round in cross section instead of the more common wide oval cowlings on most B-24s. Liberators flew with variants of Pratt and Whitney R-1830 engines, as did Consolidated’s PBY Catalina seaplane.
Consolidated refitted the engines on AM927 with power packages from PBY stock, including the Catalina’s typical top side twin exhaust stacks, while the aircraft still operated under its British serial number and carried U.S. Army Air Forces insignia. By now, it flew in aluminum silver color.
With peace, Convair gained ownership of AM927 in November 1945, applying U.S. civil registration number NL24927 to the airplane, according to the CAF.
Three years later, this Liberator was purchased by Continental Can Company, which would grow to more than 80 plants by the mid-1950s, making the use of a four-engine corporate transport viable. Continental Can painted over the Liberator’s aluminum color and adopted the U.S. civil registration number N1503.
Sometime during its service with Continental Can, this Liberator acquired an unaesthetic kinked contour nose cap, hinged to open to the side. It has been suggested this may have been a radome.
The bumpy nose remained as N1503 was sold in 1959 to the Mexican oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and the Liberator was given Mexican registration XC-CAY.
In 1967, PEMEX loaned the Liberator to the CAF, which then bought the aircraft in 1968. Acquisition of a Liberator was a major milestone in the CAF’s efforts to keep significant examples of wartime aircraft flying.
In 1971, the Liberator, registered as N12905, was painted in desert sand camouflage and christened Diamond Lil. Lil flew at events, including the CAF’s pioneering warbird air shows in Harlingen, Texas, for several years.
Photos taken in 1981 show a plexiglas bombardier’s nose mounted to Diamond Lil, giving the bomber a much-needed facelift. The C-87-style cabin windows remained in the fuselage, including an elongated set.
Fast forward to 2006-2007, and the CAF’s Gary Austin looked at this Liberator with an imaginative view of what it could be. Austin spearheaded efforts to make the Liberator as close to its B-24A lineage as possible.
He oversaw the reskinning of some of the latter-day fuselage windows, and re-opened other windows and hatches that should be present on a B-24A. The ventral tunnel gun mount was built into the airframe and, with a skilled eye but few reference documents to go on, Austin recreated the B-24A’s open-air tail gun emplacement. He removed the streamlined tail cone that was a vestige of its transport conversion and fabricated moving side panels to replicate those on original B-24A tail gun positions. B-24 bomb bay doors and bomb racks were obtained, but remain for a later refurbishing bout.
One of Austin’s cleverest cosmetic changes to back-date Diamond Lil was the placement of older-looking aluminum strips over the top of the late-war knife edge cockpit canopy. If the entire cockpit canopy and windscreen cannot be replaced with vintage structure, this aluminum rework provides a convincing masquerade.
And without the resources of the entire Convair manufacturing plant, it’s understandable that the CAF Liberator will continue to fly with its slightly longer nose.
After a few years carrying art calling the Liberator ‘Ol 927, the long-term nickname Diamond Lil returned in 2012, along with Lil’s classic pin-up painting.
As this is written, the Commemorative Air Force’s B-24 Diamond Lil has been flying more than 80 years. More than a half-century of that time has been under CAF stewardship. Lil has never looked better.
My husband Rick Garvis the the Senior Crew Chief for the CAF B-29/B-24 Squadron and responsive for taking care of Diamond Lil. He is the one who painted the beautiful large flag that is on the opposite side of the Diamond Lil nose art.
My Dad, Frank Burcham, flew 15 flights in AM927, 5 in Kansas City and 10 at Albuquerque in July 1941. He was training British pilots to ferry the Atlantic, and was the pilot on the flight where the brake locked and departed the runway. I have his log book that shows the dates and crew members of these flights. The last 3 flights were labeled as “TEST” as the Consolidated brakes crew was there and may have been trouble shooting the locked brake problem.
I am searching for any pictures of AM927 at ABQ. It may have had the British desert camouflage paint then?
That was a very nice article about an iconic plane that was a winner for the Allies in WWII. Too bad we have to see such off topic, politically extremist and unhinged comments accompanying it.
Beautifully Written story of a marvelous hair craft that was built by many patriotic people once called American patriots so lacking in today’s world too bad such a wonderful country has saved the world from oppression and manage to salvage some of its reasons such as the B 24 liberator. Very glad to see this article about this particular plane I have seen the plane in Fort Lauderdale executive airport and have amazed many people as to what does aircraft did to free the New World, the world war four for many people the snow populate our wonderful country. Please keep up the good work I love it. I’ve always loved airplanes. I’ve always been a history buff of World War II aviation love it Bob Turner now living in Florida. Call church pay at [email protected] God bless America for what it has what it has done for what it has become!
My father during WWll was working for Vultee Aircraft Bell, CA. He job was to install the bombsights in the B24’s. He received an award from Vultee with a B24 mounted on a black Ashtray with the Vultee Aircraft pin mounted on the Ashtray. Along with the ashtray he also had photos of the planes that Vultee made during WWII. After he died in 88′ I really do not know where the photos disappeared to.
Nice to see the B-24 get such a historical story written about it. My father was a waist gunner in a B-24 and flew missions out of North Africa during WWII. He flew the missions to strike the oil fields at Ploesti. Was credited with 2 confirmed kills. So proud of him and the B-24.
Ann Holtgren Pellegreno says: Nice, article, Fred,
On a personal note, in April 2022, I was asked to give a lecture about my 1967 Earhart Commemorative Flight for the Fifi and B-24 Squadron of the CAF at Dallas Executive Airport. A huge hangar that hangars both airplanes.
The squadron is populated by many wonderful and aviation-oriented-people.
After I had spoken, I was presented with a beautiful model of Diamond Lil, replete in her camouflage and name. With a wingspan of 22 inches, it is a beautiful model to behold. I was very surprised and pleased to receive it. It is displayed in my living room, seemingly coming alive as I view it.
Once the Confederate Air Force, always the Confederate Air Force. Despite the CAF’s name change (the result of being pressured by government airports), we still have BLM, riots during the “Summer of Love”, statues to our fallen soldiers and Founding Fathers being torn down. And demands for reparations from people born a century or more after the end of the War of Northern Aggression. This should be a lesson to Americans and groups like the CAF to push back when bullied. The history of the development of the B-24 with its unique “Davis Wing” is equally noteworthy. A good description is found in the rare book “Reuben Fleet and the story of Consolidated Aircraft”, by William Wagner.
Well said, Kent.
How ’bout the saddest absurdity of all: using this section of such an informative article about the history of Diamond Lil (on which I have flown accompanied by a dear friend who served on B-24 Liberators for the 15th AF in 1944, at the same base as an ancestor who was on one of the crews that never came home) to inject, here in the third decade of the 21st Century, an expression as numbingly antiquated and self-serving as “the War of Northern Aggression”. The young men who served in these aircraft — and in many cases gave their lives while doing so — were engaged in a global struggle AGAINST oppression and tyranny, not to preserve romanticized statues of men who led an armed revolt against their own country (if those are the memorials being referenced here), or perpetuate manufactured notions of a noble “Lost Cause”, or any of the other anti-Reconstruction, reactionary revisionism now struggling to make a comeback, and being defiantly chanted by the true “snowflakes”: the torch-bearing throngs of the frightened and aggrieved. Still, as those angry parades march inexorably into the past, it becomes ever more obvious that “Commemorative Air Force” is an infinitely more appropriate name, one that actually respects the kind of universal freedom the crews who maintained and flew these planes were fighting for, instead of recalling a violent, illegal, and freedom-only-for-some confederation whose efforts ultimately cost untold lives — black, white, and everything in between.
A disappointment of walk thru after having done so with the Collings Foundation’s, more true to bomber status, version. I realize it will be a work in progress but it was disheartening to see this, in person, after having volunteered and flown on “Witchcraft”. I’ll wait a few years and see if the flights are somewhat more reasonable to hold final judgement.