B-26 Marauder Illustrated Paperback – July 28, 2025

During the 1940s there was a popular advertisement for the Charles Atlas Body-Building program which featured a skinny kid getting sand kicked his face at the beach by a bully, who proceeded to steal the kid’s girlfriend. The kid, of course, enrolls in the Atlas Program and returns to the beach to deck the bully and regain the girlfriend.The popular perception of the Marauder followed the same trajectory. Though it was no skinny weakling out of the gate, the Marauder was the victim of its own high performance. It was a pilot’s airplane, fast and tough, but that speed made it too much airplane for many of the fledgling bomber pilots who were accustomed to the speeds of the T-6, which landed at a docile 50 knots, whereas the Marauder was flying down the final approach at speeds nearly three times that……things happened a lot quicker than those new bomber pilots were prepared for, and that early experience earned the Marauder a lot of uncomplimentary names, such as “Widowmaker “Martin Murderer”, “Flying Coffin”, “B-Dash-Crash”, “Flying Prostitute” (so-named because it was so fast and had “no visible means of support”, referring to its short wingspan) and “Baltimore Whore” (a reference to the city where Martin was based). And finally, in reference to MacDill Field where B-26 training was conducted, “One a Day in Tampa Bay”. The Marauder was no metaphorical “Skinny Kid”, but a lot of sand did get kicked into the face of its reputation before improvements to the basic design began to overcome the aviating deficiencies of new pilots, and the combat record of the B-26 demonstrated its effectiveness.Improvements continued throughout the life of the B-26, and the Marauder racked up an impressive list of “firsts”. It was the first WWII aircraft with 4-blade propellers, it was the first with a power-operated turret, and the Martin turret would be used in the B-17, B-24, and B-25. It was the first aircraft to feature weapons pods…..those .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the fuselage sides. It was the first to use self-sealing fuel tanks, the first to use butt-joint instead of lap-joint fuselage construction, adding to the slick, smooth, speed-enhancing design. It was the first to use an electric bomb release (vice mechanical) system. More importantly, as a testament to its survivability, it was the first bomber to complete 100, 200, and 300 missions in the ETO.The Martin B-26 Marauder remained a very effective combat airplane, and because of its demonstrated combat survival rate, ended the war with thousands of surviving B-26s parked at government disposal sites. Combat airplanes were sold to the public at a fraction of their cost, but there were not enough B-26 takers to make the Marauder a Warbird survivor. Most of those operational Marauders that survived the war did not escape the post-war smelters which turned combat metal to peacetime products. Read more