For you War Bird Buffs.

[TB Roye]

17 Micthel B-25 flying over the Dolittle Memorial.

www.youtube.com/user/mspolleyvision


Tom

[Bruce Cohen]

Tom,

Many thanks for the link, it's seeing stuff like that and getting goose bumps that makes things all worth while (stuff I was involved in SE Asia).

Bruce

[cwithboat]

Yes, except those are a B-25 Mitchells.

[Richard in Smithville]

Tom, that was incredible. They have a Mitchell Mk lll at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum and it will be up and flying during Flyfest this year.

Thanks for the post.

[Uncle Cracker]

Some beautiful restorations there. That they were able to fly those things off the relatively small carriers of that era is remarkable.

The first Dolittle raid was an epiphany to the Japanese people, who came face-to-face with the reality of what they had started at PH. It was their first dose of doubt about the wisdom and invincibility of their Emperor.

[TB Roye]

Sorry I don't know why I put B17, maybe because I was crawling around one last weekend. I know a B-25 when I see it. When I was a kid our neighbor was Pilot of one and I got to go on it, with his son.

Tom

[LCHIEN]

wow, that was just awesome and moving at the same time. The sound of those engines is just so throaty and powerful. Must have been very impressive in person seeing them fly overhead, can you imagine the squadrons of hundreds of bombers launched from England during the night and day bombing runs of late WWII?

[Pappy]

I noted at the end of the video that 8 of the 79 crew in the 16 planes to make the raid on Toyko are still with us.

[L. D. Jeffries]

Thanks for the great link TB. Geez, I didn't know there were that many B-25's still flyable. Great video. Sort of a related item. When I was working in Greenland for the Danes as a oceanic air traffic controller we got a call from a trio of Folkwolf (sp) ME-109's that were in transit from Europe to Canada to go to a musuem I guess. Never did find out where; they had landed in Iceland to refuel and were next stopping in Gander for more fuel.

[cwsmith]

Thanks! That was a great link.

The B25 was mostly used in the Pacific theater of the war. It also was used in North Africa and the Mediteranian.

The primary long-range bombers used in the U.S. European campaign, flying out of England were the B-17 and the B-24.

Here in NY, we used to have a "War Planes Museum" at Geneseo, just south of Rochester. I used to go up there quite a bit and it was always fun as they often had a large variety of WWII aircraft. It has been awhile since I visited there, but the last air show I attended they had a couple of B25's, a B-26, a B-24, and several B-17's. There must have been at least a half dozen P51's and T-6 Texan's on the grass air strip, and they had a flyover of one of the last few "Halifax's", which flew down from Canada.

At that time (a decade or so ago), Geneseo had their own B-17 (Fuddy Duddy), a P40 Warhawk, and a few others that I can't recall at the moment. They had a PBY that they had in their hanger, under restoration.

But like too many things, there was a lot of "politics" in the Geneseo organization and they ended up splitting, with a major segment coming down to Elmira's "Regional Airport"... where they were entised by a new building. Within a couple of years, Elmira ran into financial difficulties and had to sell "Fuddy Duddy".

I haven't been to either place, since then,

CWS

[BobSch]

I remember seeing a B25 at Oshkosh during the EAA fly-in back in the early '70s. An impressive aircraft.