Doolittle Raid 68th Anniversary (Read 759 times)

beautiful...

I was seven when the Doolittle Raid took place.

I still remember the pictures on the front page of the four San Francisco papers.

It was a real booster to civilian morale, after Pearl Harbor, Bataan and other defeats in the early months of WW2.

During the war, there were lots of Mitchells flying around the Bay Area, and, probably because of the Doolittle Raid, they became a favorite of mine.

In 1952, while at A&E school at Shepherd Field, I got to work on B25s, as part of my schooling.

In the mid 1950s, B25s were used as cross country, chase, just fun flying and other uses by the AF.

We would get them at THE SCAB, and I got to work on them and be around them.

They were sweet airplanes and probably the most versatile plane we had.

You could mount a ton of .50s on the bird and use it for strafing after you dropped your bomb load.

If configured for it, you could hang rear firing .50s under the wings.

There were some that had a 75mm cannon mounted in the nose. It was said to really slow the plane down when it was fired.

They also mounted 20mm and 37mm cannons on them. Plus gun pods, and anything else they could think of and still get it to fly.

I remember seeing gun film of them coming off a bomb run, then using the tail and under wing guns to keep the enemy down while they pulled out.

The early models of the R2600 engine had a half collector ring for the exhaust, that only took the exhaust from the top cylinders. The bottom cylinders had short stacks for the exhaust. That was changed, and a full collector ring exhaust system was installed when it was realized that the short stacks made the plane too visible at night, as the flames from the exhaust shot out of the short stacks.

When the B25 was introduced it was faster than many of our "first line" fighters.

It is quite a bird, and was great to see the video of them flying at W-P for the Doolittle Raiders Reunion.

Hope they keep flying for a long time.

Jim Too

:god_bless_usa