B-25

B-25. (Photo by Philip Makanna.)

—I keep seeing it. It’s in my bathroom.
The June 2017 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a B-25, one of my all-time favorite airplanes.
And not sullied by that awful-looking hard-nose with growling teeth — more ground-attack than bomber.
Worth a blog.
9,889 were built. My WWII warbirds site says the B-25 was the most widely used medium bomber during WWII.
It has two 1,700-horsepower Wright R-2600-92 Cyclone radial piston engines, and could carry 4,000 pounds of bombs.

As far as I know, this is a B-25J. No cannon; that’s the B25G. (Photo by Philip Makanna.)

In November of last year, Ghosts ran a Makanna picture of a hard-nosed toothy B-25, a B-25J — no cannon. The B-25G had the 75 mm cannon.
This B-25D looks much better.
The B-25 was versatile, and could be easily adapted.
They were kept on duty after the war ended, used for training and VIP transport; the final USAF B-25 was retired in 1960.
Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle lead a bombing raid on the Japanese mainland. It involved B-25s flying off the deck of the USS Hornet, an early aircraft-carrier.
The B-25s barely got in the air, and couldn’t return to the Hornet. They landed in China. (The Japanese then conducted a massive campaign against China.)
After the war, a B-25, lost in fog, crashed into the Empire State Building. 14 died; 11 in the building, three crew. The building still stands.
I remember a B-25 used as a camera plane for the first Cinerama movie.
Cinerama was wrap-around: triple cameras, then three projectors. It was pretty good, but the projectors could go out of register.
The triple cameras were set up in the bombardier quarters of a B-25, then the plane was flown up East River next to New York City under some of the bridges.
Exciting footage, but a single camera would have been fine.
According to my Warbirds site, about 34 B-25s are still airworthy. I’ve seen quite a few. I remember B-25s flying over as I drove to DE once. Probably a warbirds show in southeastern PA.

B-25 in Geneseo. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

A few years ago I attended a similar show in nearby Geneseo (“jen-uh-SEE-oh”). A B-25 flew in and landed, but only one. I’ve been to that show when four or five B-25s were on display.
They did pumpkin-drops. Pumpkins in the bomb-bay were dropped from low altitude into a target area. The closest pumpkin won.
I never modeled a B-25. I never could find a Revell® B-25. I had an Aurora B-26, but its wings drooped. Only the Revell® kits had interlocking wing-tabs.
Plus the B-25 was much prettier than a B-26.
I also remember Yossarian of “Catch-22” being terrified of duty in a B-25. People got shot up and killed — bloody gore everywhere.

National Warplane Museum

(That headline is a link, dear readers.)

Outside, a C-119 Boxcar, and a DC-3. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

“You know what I’m told about radial airplane engines,” said my friend Ron Palermo.
“They don’t leak oil. They’re marking their territory.”
Ron, like me, is a retired bus-driver from Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
Both he and I like propeller airplanes, particularly WWII bombers and fighter-planes.
Radial engines are different than most internal-combustion gasoline engines. Their cylinders are arrayed in a circle around a common crankshaft.
Most radials are air-cooled = aluminum finning on the cylinders.
Each cylinder activates just one master cylinder — usually atop the circle.
That is, each cylinder’s crank is not activating the propeller-attached crankshaft. They activate only that master crank, which rotates the propeller.
Air-cooled radials found favor with the Navy, since they weren’t disabled by shot-up water cooling.
And during WWII, engineers developed incredible power out of radial engines, as much as 2,600 horsepower (I’ve seen as high as 2,800) for the 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine — nine cylinders per row.
Although often this was done with water-injection, and/or supercharging or turbocharging.
Warbirds burned extremely high-octane gasoline. Tetraethyl-lead was added to snuff preigntion. It also lubricated valve-seats. Tetraethyl-lead is no longer allowed in automotive gasoline. Lead is poisonous.
Ron is a member of National Warplane Museum at Geneseo’s (“jen-uh-see-oh”) gigantic grass-strip airport.
The airport sits low in the vast Genesee Valley (“jen-uh-SEE”), our nation’s first bread-basket. The Genesee Valley gained prominence for farming, mainly because of NY’s Erie Canal.
National Warplane Museum is a collection of WWII warplanes. They have a B-17, a C-47, plus a C-45 (Twin-Beech).
They have other stuff, some of which, like the three mentioned, are also airworthy.
National Warplane Museum is a volunteer effort — Ron is a volunteer.
Every July, National Warplane Museum puts on a giant airshow — I’ve attended a few. Classic warplanes fly in, then do flight demonstrations.
This includes P-51s.
Every American, BY LAW, should required to see a P-51 fly aerobatics.
Hammerhead stalls, 500 mph power-dives, upside-down.
Just the sound is incredible. (That’s a YouTube P-51 link.)
We ambled through dusty buildings into a HUGE airport hanger.
Many airplanes were stored inside, including the B-17. Winter is the time maintenance is done.
Over everything towered the B-17, one of the movie “Memphis Belles.” Not the actual “Memphis Belle,” which is at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH.


The movie “Memphis Belle” outside at Geneseo in 2009. (Photo by Ron Palermo.)

The movie “Memphis Belle” is owned privately, not the National Warplane Museum.
Also inside was “Whiskey-Seven,” a C-47 that led the second wave of paratroopers for the Normandy invasion.


Working on “Whiskey-Seven.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Whiskey-Seven still exists, and was flown all the way to Europe for the 70th Anniversary D-Day commemoration.
It was converted into an executive transport — many DC-3s were — but was restored to military configuration.
Both its engine-cowlings were off, and the engines were dripping oil into giant funnels the size of bathtubs.
I had my dog with me — dogs are allowed, although she snapped at other dogs — but I had to watch where she went: “Out of them cartons, Big Meat-Head. There’s nothing there to eat.”


Nose-art on the movie “Memphis Belle.” (On the other side, her bathing-suit is blue.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)


“I sure wouldn’t wanna be in a ship being chased by one of these A-20 ‘Havocs’ with its six cannons blazing.” (The rudder-fin of the movie “Memphis Belle” towers above all.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Stored outside on display were a Fairchild C-119, along with a DC-3 also owned by the B-17 guy.