Liberator and Privateer (B-24, B-41, PB4Y, P-4)

[Gondor]

The Tu-95 also uses its radar to search for ships so only uses the front hemisphere i.e. the direction it's travelling in, for AEW you need all around coverage.

Gondor

Second similar radome mounted in the tail position. Nimrod AEW.3's grand-daddy. 

If we are talking mid-late 40's time scale it's unlikely that such an option could be made to work with the available electronics

Gondor

[jcf]

The Tu-95 also uses its radar to search for ships so only uses the front hemisphere i.e. the direction it's travelling in, for AEW you need all around coverage.

Gondor

Second similar radome mounted in the tail position. Nimrod AEW.3's grand-daddy. 

If we are talking mid-late 40's time scale it's unlikely that such an option could be made to work with the available electronics

Gondor

Really? Operator for the forward radar and operator for the aft radar, 'interpretation/coordination' done by human brain
rather than electronics, as it was done on ships with multiple radars 'in period'.

Anyhow, why assume it's a 'mid to late '40s' project? The Privateers were in squadron service in the USN until mid-1954.

[McColm]

Just had an idea of using the RY-3 Privateer as an AEW aircraft.
The British Royal Air Force flew the Liberator ClX by 231Sqn in the transport role, but what If you used the
1/72 Matchbox/Revell Privateer kit and reduced the engines down to two.By adding the AN/APS-20 radar housed behind the cockpit on the upper fuselage. Various radome are available in resin, plastic or vacfom. I was thinking of changing the Pratt & Whitney engines for a pair of Napier Eland turboprops from the Airfix Rotodyne kit.
This could be a replacement for the Wellington AEW.

[DarrenP2]

Hmmmm could you have mounted a couple of 20mm Hispano, Oerlikon or polstens, A 37mm or 40mm cannon like a bofors and or some .50 brownings mounted firing sideways and had an AB24 Gunship say for SEAC or USAAC in the far east during the later stages of WW2 and into Korea.

[McColm]

I'm thinking of doing something very similar to a 1/72 Frog Avro Shackleton Mk3, using the spare parts from the Privateer and a broken Neptune kit.

[Mossie]

B-24J-15-CO. Liberator with B-17G nose to test the chin turret.

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[Old Wombat]

Now someone needs to make that operational!

[sandiego89]

It does look like that, you would have though the could have tested it on an early B-17.   

[Mossie]

From the info I can find, it was designed to test the use of the chin turret on the B-24, rather than developing the turret itself.  I'd imagine that if trials had been successful, a chin turret would have been designed specifically to fit the Liberator.