Language of Material: English

Contributing Institution: San Diego Air and Space Museum Library and Archives

Title: Glenn H. Smith Personal Papers

Identifier/Call Number: SDASM.SC.10221

Physical Description: .33 Cubic Feet The collection contains items mostly about the B-24 Liberator Club, and includes newsletters, photographs, news clippings, and some documents. The collection consists of one gray archival box, 10 x 12.5 x 2.5 inches.

Date (bulk): bulk

Abstract: The collection contains items mostly about the B-24 Liberator Club, and includes newsletters, photographs, news clippings, and some documents. Unfortunately, no biographical information is available for Glenn H. Smith. He clearly was associated in some way, or had an interest in the B-24 Liberator bomber and the International B-24 Liberator Club.

Physical Description: Description: The collection consists of one gray archival box, 10 x 12.5 x 2.5 inches. 
 
 Content notes: The collection contains items mostly about the B-24 Liberator Club, and includes newsletters, photographs, news clippings, and some documents. 

Unfortunately, no biographical information is available for Glenn H. Smith. He clearly was associated in some way, or had an interest in the B-24 Liberator bomber and the International B-24 Liberator Club. The Liberator Club was formed in October 1968 and is an international organization for anyone who was associated with the B-24 Liberator airplane. The purpose of the club is to promote the significant role of the B-24 Liberator in World War II, to call attention to the outstanding achievements of the airplane and its crewmen, to encourage the preservation of documents connected with the history of the airplane, and to keep an inventory of the planes that still survive. Membership is open to flight crews, ground crews, support personnel, production personnel, historians, writers, modelers, World War II aviation enthusiasts, and relatives of crewmen. The B-24 was born when the Army Air Corps decided early in 1939 that it needed a longer-range aircraft than the B-17. The job fell to Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, founded in 1923 by Maj. Reuben H. Fleet. Fleet directed his engineering team, headed by Chief Engineer Isaac M. (Ike) Laddon, to take the wing and tail from the Model 31 flying boat and the power plants from the PBY and develop a bomber with twice the bomb load capacity of the B-17. Two days short of a nine-month deadline, the XB-24 made its first flight, on December 29, 1939, from Lindbergh Field. The B-24 was a four-engine, twin-tail aircraft, and was one of the workhorses of World War II for the then Army Air Corps and the Navy, where it was known as the PB4Y-1. In its time it was the most produced plane in this country and third in the world -- 18,188 were made, many of them in San Diego.

The materials in this collection were donated to the San Diego Air & Space Museum in October, 2018. The collection has been processed and is open for research with no restrictions.