B-25J Mitchell

The B-25 Mitchell's were some of the prettiest planes from that era...There is one locally that is out of Chino Airport...It's called "Photo Fanny"
http://www.warbirdregistry.org/b25registry/b25-4430423.html
I've got pictures of it flying at the local Air Show...

Years ago I visited the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston...I didn't know there was one in Addison...
Great shot of the engine & prop...
 
Nice shots of a nice airplane. I do really like the tonality of the shot of the engine and propeller.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Old birds

Old birds

Texas has a wealth of historical aircraft, with Galveston, San Marcos, and Midland all having wonderful facilities. If you get a chance to go to Midland, check out the Commemorative Air Force museum for sure. It is the home base for the last flying B-29, "Fi Fi". She was undergoing an engine swap while I was there once, but was out on the road when I had my F100.

I will agree that the B25's are amongst the best looking of "larger" aircraft, along with the iconic C3 and it's variations.

Midland CFA museum's hangar and repair facility.
 
I flew on a B-25J in 2007. It's a wonderful experience. The plane is smaller than you expect. Hard to imagine being inside it as Triple A and enemy fighters tried to shoot you down.
Nose art is a wonderful diversion from the harshness of wartime and the daily violence that these crews experienced. The plane I flew on is called Tondelayo, from the Collins organization. The best was to see these planes is at the annual Oshkosh Air Show, where dozens of warbirds are on display and flying, along with 15,000 planes of all types.

8568986310_e626c45acb.jpg
 
Our son was able to go to Oshkosh last year with a classmate's family...they flew from Boston in the family's private plane...they spent the week there camping...he had a blast...
 
THE B25 variant I like is the one that was used a lot in the Pacific for tactical ground support. It had up to 8 x 50 cal machine guns in the nose (the perspex was removed and the bombadier's position in the nose was faired over with metal for this version) a further two 50 cals were located on each side of the pilot's positions in metal blisters mounted externally on the fuselage and in addition the top turret could be fixed in the forward position and fired in sync with the others by the pilot. It was this type of plane that proved the value of low level attack and gave rise ultimately to planes like the A 10 Warthog. For ship attacks they would have 4 x 500lb bombs with a delayed fuze for skip bombing. For ground attack they used a large number of small parachute retarded bombs to give the plane time to get away from the blast of its own bombs while being able to clear large areas. Imagine being on an enemy ship with that sucker lining up on you and up to 14 x 50 cal machine guns spitting at you. Ouch that gotta hurt.
 
Many decades ago, I took our two then very young sons to a B-25 fly in / Doolittle Raiders reunion in Titusville FL. The 20+ B-25s were amazing but nothing compared to those who flew them on that mission.

One of those original crew members walked up and said to our sons "I overhead your dad trying to explain who were are, what we did, and why it was such a big deal. I can tell you kids are wondering if what we did was so damn important, why did they send a bunch of old farts like us to fly the planes?" Our young sons just nodded in agreement.
 
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