...during the War, daddy?

Being way too young to have been in WWII (contrary to rumors of my age), I have nonetheless read about it (excessively) and talked to any veteran I could corner. One thing I always wanted to do was to joy ride in a warbird. I'm finally getting that chance- cross one off the bucket list. Next Saturday I shall take off into the wild blue yonder as a waist gunner in a B-25. I made the reservation this morning. Not cheap (cost of an average 99EG) but what the hell, the EG I would probably tire of and sell but this memory will never leave.

After takeoff we're free to move about the plane. Taking donations to help feed the .50 machine gun- we get to shoot at passing Cessnas. (Kidding!!)

Just once I wanted to experience the thunder of twin 1700hp Wright engines from inside the airplane.

That's cool.

I want to drive a tank

That sounds exhilarating!
I had to look it up. (boeing.com)

The North American B-25 Mitchell, a twin-engine bomber that became standard equipment for the Allied air forces in World War II, was perhaps the most versatile aircraft of the war. It became the most heavily armed airplane in the world, was used for high- and low-level bombing, strafing, photoreconnaissance, submarine patrol, and even as a fighter and was distinguished as the aircraft that completed the historic raid over Tokyo in 1942.

It required 8,500 original drawings and 195,000 engineering man-hours to produce the first one, but nearly 10,000 were produced from late 1939, when the contract was awarded to North American Aviation, through 1945.

Named for famed airpower pioneer Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, it was a twin-tail, mid-wing land monoplane powered by two 1,700-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines.

Normal bomb capacity was 5,000 pounds (2268 kilograms). Some versions carried 75 mm cannon, machine guns and added firepower of 13 .50-caliber guns in the conventional bombardier's compartment. One version carried eight .50-caliber guns in the nose in an arrangement that provided 14 forward-firing guns.

Technical Specifications

B-25 Mitchell Bomber
First flight Aug. 19, 1940
Span 67 feet 6.7 inches
Wing area 610 square feet
Length 53 feet
Weight Empty, 20,305 pounds; normal gross weight, 27,051 pounds; useful load, 6,746 pounds
Power plant Two 1,700-hp Wright Cyclone supercharged 14-cylinder radial engines, driving 12-foot-7-inch full-feathering, constant-speed Hamilton Standard three-bladed props
Speed In excess of 300 miles per hour
Crew Pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, radio operator, gunner
Range In excess of 3,000 miles, using droppable tanks
Landing gear Hydraulically operated tricycle

That sounds like a thrill. My dad learned his trade working on Flying Fortress' and Liberators in the Mighty Eighth. Not to downplay anyone's contribution to putting down the criminal pigs that most unfortunately rose to become the Nazi party, but I don't think its well known that the 8th suffered more fatalities in its heavy bombing campaign over Europe than did the Marine Corp in their heroic efforts retaking the Pacific. I walked through a B-17 a few years before my dad passed away and I'm glad we did. That was the only time I've been in a Flying Fort and it it is a treasured memory. Be sure to take pictures of your flight and to post your experience to the forum.

PS - take a look at the B-25H for one of the most impressive variants made of the Mitchell.

This one is a B-25J, the last of the series. It flew 14 combat missions over Japan.

After takeoff I'm free to move about the plane. They told me you have to be a squirrel to crawl up into the bombardier's position so that probably won't happen. I'm like a kid the week before Christmas.

I rode in an M4 Sherman, briefly. It was parked on display at a family day picnic where my dad worked, in the mid-60's. While he and I were in the turret playing Army (well, at least I was), a drunk who had driven them in the War crawled into the driver's seat and fired it up and we lurched away amid screams from the National Guard guys who were responsible for the tank. Fools shouldn't have left the keys in it, and they shouldn't have served alcohol. It was fun while it lasted!

Remind me to tell you about a certain National Guard M4 Sherman left setting after an exercise in the fields 1/2 mile from our house, and the bizarre incident involving my 12 year old self and my best friend and a certain piece of ordnance left laying inside the unlocked turret...

(Not for public consumption even though the statute of limitations has surely expired. )

Congratulations Roy, That's a once in a lifetime experience. My Father was a B-17 tail gunner flying out of England from June 1943 to February 1944. I got to visit a B-17 on the ground once but the crew wouldn't let me go back to the tail gunner area. Several family members flew in B-17's later in the war. One of my Mother's Brothers had been a radioman and got to fly in a B-17 a few years ago shortly before he died.
I wrote up my Father's experiences and it was published in the April 2016 issue of "Military" magazine. The September 2017 issue of "Military" has a writeup of my experiences during the evacuation of Saigon if you have any interest in that sordid affair. This is the current issue. I got a copy a few days ago so availability should be good for that issue. I don't know if April 2016 issues are still available.
David

So did you guys end up shelling a neighbor's yard? That would be cool, especially if your neighbor had one of those dogs that always left "presents" in your yard!

S99Vg Payback can be a mother. Big bombs in retaliation for little ones.

Nothing quite that drastic, but there was a very loud bang nonetheless...

Very cool! I'd rather do a tank than bomber, but don't blame you a bit.

Both grandfathers owned farms, so neither one joined. Had one uncle that served as a MP to guard POW's in Texas, and had a great uncle that served in the Pacific until he got wounded and came home. Nobody in the family ever talked about it, except for things like the rationing. I ate up everything about WW2 that I could as a kid.

My dad was a radioman in WWII. He said the snipers always went for the guy standing next to the radioman, figuring he was in charge. Interesting times compared to our daily existence.

Gary that will be a great experience, green here. There were a few WW II warbirds at a Monmouth, NJ airport a year or two ago and a few of us went to see. A B-17, B-25 and a B-24 were there as well as a P-51. The sound of those big radials on the bombers is something to remember. They all took off and landed a few times.

That is awesome Gary.

My bucket list airplane ride is to sit behind the Rolls Royce Merlin of a P-51 Mustang.

Can't even imagine the power of that machine and the adrenaline rush that would give me. Probably would piss my pants.

We expect a full debriefing immediately upon your safe arrival on the ground.

Good for You Gary, very cool!

I'll take an online flying class. Maybe then they'll let me fly it too.

On to the watchlist you go..

Gary- My Dad was a couple years too young for WWII but has always been interested in the warbirds. I went with him to, nearby Dubuque, Ia. last year to tour a B29. He was tempted to take a ride and I sort of nudged him into spending the kids inheritance : ) and it was a thrill of a lifetime for him. He rode behind the pilot- expensive but not a bad as the bombadier nose seat! Have a great time Saturday.

Gary. Airshow at Andrews is in a couple weeks. They put on a hellava event. From the old to the new. Those p-51's are a thing of beauty. The thunderbirds are there this year doing their thing. I'm sure Annapolis will be seeing some of their activity.
Steve

One of my friends has a father who was a flight engineer and gunner on a Marine Mitchell which was, I think, called a PBJ. Did a number of "skip bombing" attacks on Japanese transports and escorts in early 1943. Talk about a sphincter tightener! They also shot up a number of Japanese airfields from O feet altitude, using parafrag bombs to avoid shooting themselves down; another relative used these from an Army A-20 in Europe. I have seen the marks left on several Sicilian and Corsican control towers by their attacks, and the pockmarks left on a Gestapo barracks (former, and now again, a girls high school) in Arles France by one of their near-misses. In Europe you can find a lot of history still, just by looking for bomb fragment "pocks" and bullet holes.... Try doing the "where was the window with a sniper in it?" tour of the buildings around the University of Paris on the Left Bank sometime. You'll SEE what I mean!

Very cool Gary - Take earplugs! Huh? I said Take earplugs! Huh? Never mind.

Is it out of Fredrick? There's a bare metal one that I see fly out of there occasionally. Looking forward to hearing about it.

The local news (WJAC) ran a story this AM about a B-17 that is at State College. They've been giving rides to area vets who flew them. The local reporter went up with his grandfather. Certainly a welcome change from the usual drugs and shootings.

Link:

http://wjactv.com/news/local/wwii-veteran-grandson-fly-together-in-b-17-bomber

Dale

Congratulations Gary !!!! You have more huevos than me ...... I am deathly afraid of heights. Twenty feet is my limit :):):) So, an old man who has never left the ground, will be anxiously waiting to hear about your flight. "TOUJOURS AU DANGER"


John

Enjoy the flight! Sounds like a great experience. Borrow one of those wearabe vido cameras if you can.

My uncle was a bombadier in North Africa and Italy. Wish I could have had the chance to hear his stories. He stood all of about 5'3".
My dad was in ordance in France. Careful what you wish for in driving a tank ... he had a hatch come down on him and suffered terrible neck pain forever.

Funny thing is I'm deathly afraid of heights, too. I get shaky on a step ladder, but I love to fly. Weird, huh?

Yeah, heights can bug me but flying is a different thing. I think its a vertigo thing with me when it comes to heights on the ground. I look at pictures of high steel workers, especially the older photos, and wonder how the hell those guys did it.

My dad flew a p38 thunderbolt in WW 2.

37.5 missions, shot down, taken prisoner and escaped. Pretty wild deal, said he melted a lot of 50 caliber barrels. Passed out a lot when they would pull up......no G suits back then.

I drove a M60A3 and and op for training mission Sheridan dressed up with a T62 fiberglass shell.

The Sheridan was way funnier to drive.
Loading and shooting the M60A3 was an absolute hoot!

The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the fighter plane in WW2





The P-38 was another war plane

The P38 was the Lightning, the twin engine, twin tail boom fighter. Richard Bong, a top Ace (and more famous here for owning a Savage 99) flew a P38 Lightning. The P38's did not fair all that well in the European theater because much of it was fought at high altitude and they used Allison engines which did not have the high altitude performance - they excelled in the Pacific theater because they had long range capability, P38's were used on the mission to track & shoot down Admiral Yamamoto.

I live about 2½ hours from OshKosh, WI were the EAA holds their Fly In every years and have been going regularly for over 40 years, if you want to see WWII era planes, and see them fly, it's the place to visit. I have had the opportunity to see almost every WWII era US fighter and a few others including a British Supermarine Spitfire fly. They even had the last flying British Avro Lancaster there one year I attended. For several years there was a flying DeHavilin Mosquito, these were the fastest propeller planes of the war and were made from plywood so they were light and were powered by twin Rolls Royce Merlins.

The father of my first wife was English, a little too old for service in WWII (was in the Home Guard though). He lived in a suburb of London and worked at the Hawker aircraft factory. He was a section supervisor there and he and his guys made the fairings that blended the aluminum wings to the cloth covered fuselages of the Hawker Hurricane fighters (using the traditional "English Wheel" and wooden bucks to form them). Every one of those planes that took to the sky had his fairings on it. (The Spitfire gets all the glory, but Hurricanes were equal in number in the early days of the war, and were regarded as more than a match against Messerschmidts too.)

(Side note: his boarding house was hit during the Blitz one night while he was finishing a three day straight work shift. He came home to find his third floor apartment exposed to the world- the entire outside wall was blasted off, but his furnishings were intact and as if nothing had happened. He went up, discovered the hot water still worked and took a quick bath before gathering up his stuff. After closing his eyes for just a second he woke up 12 hours later and incurred the wrath of a Bobby who had reluctantly granted him permission initially to run upstairs and grab his things.

Around the same time he took his GF to a dance hall one night. After leaving early "to go back to her place", they weren't but a block away when the air raid sirens sounded as simultaneously bombs started to hit. Big SNAFU, the Germans got through undetected. A big one hit the dance hall they had just left, killing a staggering number of people and started a fire that took most of the rest. He and his girl spent the rest of the night helping the Fire Brigade combat the blaze and then to drag burnt corpses from the ruins. Helluva date night.)

After the war he migrated to America, met a woman and married her in 1950, and had a couple kids. When I knew him in the 1970's-80's he was in his 70's and 80's.

I got six rides in the back seat of an EA-6B Prowler when deployed to Japan. I was assigned to them. A few pilots tried getting me sick, to no avail. Anyways, we once flew just south of the DMZ in South Korea. This was the same day that President GW Bush was there for the first time and looking across it would binoculars. I was thinking that if we had to eject for whatever reason and I drifted over to the north side, that life would really suck pretty quickly.

Have fun Gary.

Got me going, on the internet, that is. My MIL's uncle Vladimir Kovalchick, was on the B24 Liberator, "Squat N Droppit", plane #41-28710, when it was shot down near Bonnehain, June 12,44. Nose art wasn't the greatest, but I always loved the name. If you check out " American Air Museum in Britain" and click on "Aircraft" and go to page 19 they have several pretty good pics. Cruising that site, it's amazing how many planes we put into action, Joe.

I can't seem to get the pics to post. It's a great site to search if you know the name of the plane you are looking for, or search the persons name, Joe.

I always loved it when we got the airborne troubleshooter program started back up when I was in VAQ-35 and could get some of our sailors up to see what their hard work resulted in. It was also handy if you sheared a starter shaft or some other relatively easy fix on the road and could get them and parts there organically and not have to deal with NALO for transport.

I flew one of my guys over to Mountain Home once to fix something and they had us cut through the EW range at low level (200' 500 kts) as the range above was in use. He told me afterward we had pretty much ruined him for roller coasters.

I never did understand the pilots that tried to get folks who got a ride sick. This was supposed to be fun/motivational/informative and not an ab workout.

Pugs (2400 Prowler hours and 502 traps)

"Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
sonuvabitch, lost again!"

A P38 saved my Father's bacon. They were returning from a mission over Germany when they had to drop out of the formation due to loss of an engine I believe. They were over the English Channel when a German fighter came after them. A P38 showed up in time to run the German away. My Father said they wouldn't have lasted long in the water if they had to bail out over the Channel. David

My dad flew a p 47 thanks for the correction.
He would mention the p 38 ,I think it might have replaced the p 47 for bomber escort.
The p 38 is also the name for the can opener we were issued for C rations.
I get them numbers confused all the time.


There is no doubt they were all heroes.

My father was a B-25 pilot in WWII, flew for the Marine Corp. We have many pictures of his his crew standing in front of his plane #4. I am envious of your ability to ride in a B-25....good for you.

FYI....I saw a B-25 take off from the Easton, Md airport a few years back.

Doc

Haa, my office is right across I-70 from the runway. I see pretty much everything that goes in and out of here. We get a lot of cool stuff flying past my window. We get everything from the Confederate Air Force to modern war planes and choppers. A few times a year there's a B-17 that comes here and gives rides. It'll fly right over me about 10 or 15 times a day when they do it.

We Marines called the C ration can opener a John Wayne can opener. My wife found an early set of my dog tags recently and the can opener is marked "US SPEAKER". Nothing about P-38 or John Wayne. Sorry this is getting off the subject. At my age reminiscing makes my mind wander. David

Pugs,

I bet you a shiny penny that I know some folks that you do as well. I spent a little time at Whidbey, but not like you. I was the MMCO with VMAQ-2.

Prowler people were awesome. They embraced the team concept which spilled over to the maintainers. The fighter squadrons had a complete different attitude.

Just a few minutes ago I was sitting in a bar with a 95 year old guy (who just got done playing 8 holes of golf). We talked about the war a little and it turned out he was in the 1st Inf Div and claimed he vaguely remembered my uncle- but I think he was humoring me.

Last night I had a whopper buck at 85 yards. It then with its nine buddies walk right under my tree stand......


Which I was not in.

Today two of his 10 point buddies walked 12 yards past me in the stand .......but not him?

GRRRRR

Dad had a buddy who flew a twin seat P-51 back in the 70's doing air shows and whatnot. He took me up for a ride one time when he flew into a grass strip near our home. He had made the mistake of telling me we'd go flying, and I bugged him incessantly wanting to know when we were going flying every time he came in. I'm guessing he just got tired of this 10 year old kid bugging him so much.

Long story short, he took me up for about 15 minutes and just scared the living crap out of me. I don't think he had the plane flying upright and straight the whole time we were up except for takeoff and landing. Loops, rolls, climbs, dives-he did them all. I just hung on and hoped I wouldn't lose my lunch.

It was a great experience for a wide eyed kid who even at an early age was a total military aviation junkie. Sadly, he died the next year after we ":flew together."

Much later in life, I had a quality control inspector working for me who had been on the R&D team that built the P-36 Seversky. The air show was coming to town, and he was going up for a ride in a B-17, but had second thoughts due to the $300.00 price tag. We took up a collection and covered his flight. I went out to the show and talked to the crew and told them of his history with the Seversky. When he came out for his flight the men on the crew made a big fuss over old Jack, and had him autograph some stuff for them. They really made his day, and he very much enjoyed the flight.,

I normally don't like doing this but the aviation junkie in me won't leave me alone. Seversky made the P-35, which became the P-43 Lancer and eventually the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Curtis made the P-36 which became the YP-37 and then the P-40 Warhawk/Kittyhawk. Again, my apologies and I am green with envy over your Mustang flight. Thanks for the story!

My father was in the islands during the war, as a boy I asked him if he saw a bird of paradise he said" yes but they were called lightnings" as I got older he gave me a model of the lighting made from 303 bullets and explained this aircraft and its crews were salvation in some pretty bad situations. Like most old diggers thats as far as he took the story. It pains me greatly that I lost that model as young boy not realizing what it was and what it meant, youth not a lot to be said for it sometimes

Johno

Johno, your post sent my mind back almost 65 years.Back in the early '50s I visited some relatives in California. Never learned the source but about their house were a number of model aircraft made of spent and dummy .50 shell casings. The one I spent the most time looking at was the P-38.

Rather than go through the gyrations of posting pics from my photo gallery on my phone to this forum via Imgur, I waited until I got home.

Some "happy snaps" from yesterday:

Jolly good!

What a hell of a ride! You gotta experience the soul shuddering roar of twin Wright Cyclone 1700hp engines at least once in your life.

40 minute loop over WVA, MD, and PA. We had to stay well west of Hagerstown because Trump was supposed to be at Camp David.

I begged them to let me replace the dummy rounds in the ammo belts with my own .50's, but they wouldn't let me. Saw a couple Cessna's that would've been easy targets.

Freaking awesome! Congrats!

Now That's what I call FUN!!!

Congrats!!

Looks Like a Great time Gary!

Well done!

Outstanding ! There's nothing like experiencing the power of big radials and swinging props! .

Amen. And do it from inside the plane, not outside!

A few years before my dad passed away we went out to our local airport on the morning of the day after an air show to watch the four Wright Cyclones on the "Aluminum Overcast" wind up for take off. My dad learned his trade turning wrenches on Forts and Liberators in the the 8th Air Force. Too bad you couldn't have touched off those Brownings in defense of the Mitchell against some of those Cessna 109s, Piper 190s, the dreaded Mooney 262, or the A6M5-Bellanca!