Consolidated B-24 Liberator C-87 Liberator Express

In early 1942 there was a pressing need for a transport with better high-altitude performance and longer range than the Douglas C-47 Skytrain. The San Diego plant began sending B-24D airframes to Fort Worth for conversion into the C-87 transport: the transparent nose was removed and replaced by a hinged cargo door, and large cargo doors were installed in the waist area.

Only 287 C-87s and eight US Navy RY variants were produced, but they mattered in the Army Air Forces' early airlift operations, when aircraft with high-altitude, long-range heavy-hauling ability were scarce. They flew in many theatres: hazardous runs from Labrador to Greenland and Iceland in the North Atlantic and, above all, the Hump route over the Himalayas between India and China.

It was not a popular aircraft with its crews. It had the distressing habit of losing all cockpit electrical power on take-off or landing; engine power and reliability with the less capable superchargers often left much to be desired; it was vulnerable to icing and prone to spin with even small ice accumulations. Writer and pilot Ernest K. Gann, who flew C-87s in southern Asia and China, recorded those flights in Fate is the Hunter. In the RAF the C-87 was the Liberator C Mk.VII.