History The smell of avgas in the morning...

As I walked across the Drew U campus this morning I heard unusual engine noises above...I quickly found a spot outside tree cover and there was a B25 bomber, lazily cruising around low enough to see well! It had OD paint with full AAF markings...it was the glass nosed model.
Wow. The air here is usually full of the most boring stuff, high end small jets, traffic reporter copters, private planes of the most uninteresting sort.
Made my day. Now I need to find out if there's an event in Northern NJ that I'm missing.

 

maybe the one owned by the collins foundation in white plains ny??

 

There's a video on the internet showing B-24's using just machine guns to sink Japanese ships off the coast of Vietnam. They would silence the deck guns then shoot at the waterline until another tin-can cruiser sank to the bottom.

 

There was a ship attack version of the B25...from wikipedia:
"The factory made available kits to the Air Depot system to create the strafer-nose B-25J-2. This configuration carried a total of 18 .50 in (12.7 mm) light-barrel AN/M2 Browning M2 machine guns: eight in the nose, four in the flank-mount conformal gun pod packages, two in the dorsal turret, one each in the pair of waist positions, and a pair in the tail – with 14 of the guns either aimed directly forward, or aimed to fire directly forward for strafing missions. Some aircraft had eight 5 in (130 mm) high-velocity aircraft rockets (HVAR).[13]..."

I have heard yarns of these things sawing ships in half with a single run.

 

AHA! Wings of Freedom tour, here at MoTown airport, September 4-7! Morristown Airport!

 

Glad you found it, Bruce!
Here in Atwater, I am in a 'circular climb-out' of Castle Air Force Base, which boasts the longest runway in the U,S.
De-comissioned in the 1990s, we are fortunate to retain a large museum here, and 'Open Cockpit Days' on certain occasions.
Air Force One is here, (the First 'Air Force One', dating back to the President Eisenhower years.
We see all the flown-in classic WWll fighters, some bombers, one year two P-38s flew out in 'formation'...P51s are quite common every National holiday, so we are 'blessed'!

I have stood in my back yard, in the open rollup door of my shop and witnessed first hand a B24 Liberator in a steep right hand bank, full throttles, to regain altitude after a nixed landing...saw the pilot's face, quite unnerving! That was in 2010, just a summer afternoon.
I expected it to get caught up in the dreaded 'ground effects'...yes, it was THAT low!

 

Several years ago before my Dad passed away, we took a flight in a B-25. One of the coolest things we ever did. A real old hot rod!

 

When I used to work for Pan American World Airways the company's President Jaun Trippe had a B-25 as his personal aircraft.

Gary

 

Dad flew 58 missions as a gunner on B-25's and A'20's in the Pacific.. Thanks to the ideas of George Kenney, and the skill of Paul "Pappy" Gunn, the strafer was born and raised hell with the sons of Nippon.

 

Maybe that's why when I see/ hear a WWII aircraft all I can think is, "Now that's a Real Plane!"

 

nothin like the sound of those radial engines. must have really sounded swell when the sky was full of em

 

Radial engines do sound good. I've been in aviation my whole life and was at Kadena AFB in Okinowa and saw an SR-71 Blackbird takeoff. Trust me when I tell you theres nothing that comes even close to sounding like that. It will flat out get your attention.

Gary

 

I prefer the smell of unburnt Avgas.
Mmmm...

 

Not to the people on the ground too much. There was an air show a few years back scheduled to come out to our local airport one weekend. I'd never seen or heard a B17 before, I couldn't go and had kind of forgotten about it. Well I was outside and heard this awesome burbling noise in the sky, and I instinctively knew exactly what it was.

One thing people probably don't appreciate is the huge amount of effort involved to get 500 planes in the sky like they did. When I was in the .mil it was a lot of long days and preparation for probably a week to get all of the battalion helicopters (about 20) up in the air for one night of fun, and nobody was shooting at us. To get that many planes in the sky all at once is really something.

 

I have friends doing work on these projects, a great website: http://www.champaignaviationmuseum.org/

 

1820’s, 1830’s, 2800’s, 3350’s, 4360’s, Allison’s, Merlin’s, and maybe a Griffon, and more. As long as we’re off topic, the Reno Air Races start next week. Lots of noise, some at 500mph.

 

My ringtone is a 3350 starting up.. People hearing it for the first time say " what the heck is that??"

 

How did you manage that?

Ray

 

Yep, terrific show! I have been several times, but not for awhile. I enjoyed walking the pits as much as the races themselves. Seeing all the race planes up close and personal was a real treat!

Ray

 

Someone posted a link on WIX, Warbird Information Exchange, awhile back that had different aviation ring tones. I'll try to find and post it when I get home later today.

 

Castle Air Force Museum is really nice, spent a couple of hours there on our way from Oakhurst to Monterey 3-4 years ago.

 

Was my description as well after my flight in the Collings B-25 about 10 years ago......
At idle on the ramp, prior to taxy I thought someone was outside hitting the fuselage sides with a lump hammer, but it was just the explosions in the exhaust from the big radials on idle a few feet away......
I had a flight in their B-17G as well, which was a much more sedate old lady compared to the B-25.

 

that your father's plane?? looks like the later model B25 gunship where the added more machine guns. the original units had a 75mm cannon with 2 machine guns used for sighting and ranging the cannon. pappy decided 2 wasn't enough so they bumped that up to four in the nose and four more in blisters on the side of the fuse. eventually they realized the number of machine guns was enough to take out what was left of the japanese navy and removed the heavy canon.

 

Your close, but a tad off. Yes, that was one of the planes dad flew in. Standing with the Aussie boots and bandaged legs is BG (Ret) Bill Webster ( injuries from being shot down). Dad flew between 12-15 missions with him, including a take-off crash!. I communicate with him monthly. A very spry 95 year old!! Now, that bird is a C/D model (early model) and is one of the original modded -25's that Pappy built. These were the ones used during the Battle of the Bismark Sea and proved their worth. Now, the G and H models were the cannon equipped. The first one in the 3rd, a G model, was "Lil Fox" ,named for Jack Fox, the NAA Rep in the SWPA. I show it being flown by Pappy 28 July 43 on a barge sweep. They encountered 2 Japanese Destroyers ( Ariake and Mikazuki) off of Cape Gloucester and proceeded to have fun Pappy hit one multiple times with the 75 with little effect.. 250lb bombs did the trick. Dad received one of his Air Medals for knocking out a gun position on one of the cans. There is a difference between the G and H models to the fifties, so that does confuse some people. The 3rd's cannons were pulled out for basically two reasons. First, the slow rate of fire (manually loaded) and 2- In order to aim the beast, you had to fly a pretty established flightpath. not conductive to getting home after a pass at low altitude with Japanese ground and ship gunners who were good with their weapons! I do have the combat pics of that mission, but am hesitant about posting as I know it upsets some of the guys. I do have them posted on fb under 5th AF "Flying Buccaneers. Here's pics of Jack Fox and his namesake, and the "Mad Professor" Pappy Gunn at his shack

 

Forgot to add... the 75 did have a sight mounted in the cockpit.. All pics courtesy my good friend, the late Jack Heyn, 3rd Photo Section.

 

There is a group making the rounds, a B17, B24, B 25, and a P51. They were just at a local airport here about 2 weeks ago.

 

Possibly the Collins Foundation's birds.

 

Could be. My daughter took the grandkids to see them. They were giving rides and actually letting the co-pilot steer the P-51. THAT would be worth every cent of the $2200 it cost.

 

They were flying B-17s out of Cape May over the weekend. Every half hour a B-17 would buzz the beach where we were in Avalon. It made my day. I've been hooked on these planes since reading Hell's Angels: The Story of 303rd Bombardment division back in June. The story of the bombers in WWII is absolutely amazing and the advancement of machinery during that time period is marveling.