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B-25 Anecdotes

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We're including this new page as a place for anyone to send in stories about the experiences with the B-25, either in wartime service or during the post-war period. If anyone has anything they'd like to add, please send them on in.

The Crash of a B-25

My book B-25 Mitchell in Civil Service contains short histories of each B-25 operated on the civil registries of the world. The entry for B-25J s/n 44-30470 (N3443G) concludes with a notation that it crashed and was destroyed on August 9, 1970 at Orange, Massachusetts, after the aircraft rolled inverted during a go-around attempt. This information was drawn from the FAA's registration file and an NTSB brief of the accident. Recently, I was contacted by the nephew of the pilot killed in that accident, and he was kind enough to provide a detailed account of the incident. One of the pleasures of writing aviation history is how the dots sometimes connect, so here is Mark Perez's recollections of that tragic day nearly twenty-five years ago:

My Uncle's name was Roger Lopez and he was my Mom's only sibling. He had been a pilot in the Air Force and had flown B-25's while in the service. He had been out of the service for about ten years and was running the family farm and dairy in Northfield, Massachusetts. when, in the summer of 1970, he came upon the opportunity to fly this B-25 from Turners Falls, Massachusetts, to a new owner in Rochester, New York. The aircraft was in very poor condition and had not been flown in some time. In order to reactivate his flying status and carry a co-pilot for the trip to New York he had to do several practice full-stop landings at Orange, Massachusetts, with a representative from the FAA present on the ground. He took off from Turners Falls without incident and we believe circled Orange Airport once before attempting to land. On his first landing attempt something went wrong and he apparently tried to add power but the aircraft rolled over and crashed vertically into the ground. He was killed instantly.

The FAA representative was not at Orange yet and he did not witness the crash. According to witnesses and newspaper accounts, the crash occurred at 8:30 AM. There is some discrepancy because the FAA representative was supposed to have been there at 8 AM but apparently he was late - he would later apologize to my Grandmother for this. However, the official NTSB brief, which I have a copy of, says the crash occurred at 7:45 AM. My Grandparents and my Mom never really questioned this for several reasons. This was an old aircraft, in poor condition at the time and with no radio. My Uncle had been advised not to fly it. In fact his best friend from Northfield, also an Air Force pilot, had tried to talk him out of the flight just the night before. But Roger just tried to talk him into going with him. Roger knew the risk he was taking and what could the FAA representative have done to help him anyway? There were some kids playing in a field nearby and some question of another plane on the runway but this has never been confirmed. Roger was 36 years old and he was unmarried at the time. He left my Grandparents and a sister, my mother.

I was almost nine years old at the time of the accident and I still have vivid memories of visiting my Uncle at the farm and of his terrific sense of humor. Ever since, the B-25 has been very special to me. I think it is a beautiful aircraft with a special place in our country's history - the Doolittle Raid particularly comes to mind. I apologize for the length of this story but I thought some history of my Uncle's accident might be of interest to you. The very short NTSB brief doesn't even begin to tell the whole story of what happened to B-25J #44-30470. (Added January 2004)

Jack Rees and his B-25s

This anecdote was provided by Greg Rees, whose father, Jack Rees, flew B-25s first with RCAF, then with his own company, and then for G&M Aviation in Alberta, Canada.

I will begin with a little aviation background on my father. He joined the Canadian Navy in 1949 and served aboard aircraft carrier H.M.C.S. Magnificent as an aircraft handler. His duties were moving and securing Fairey Fireflys to and from the flight deck. After first arriving on the carrier he was instructed to take cover whenever a Firefly Mark I was landing. They had wooden propellers and if the pilot missed the arresting cable the Firefly would fly into a safety net which would ultimately cause the prop to shatter into a million pieces causing great harm to anyone in the vicinity. Being a young lad of 17, this really sunk into his head. When a Mark I finally did plow through the safety net, Dad was 3 decks below and still running for cover before he realized he could turn around.

After serving for 1.5 years on the carrier he had seen enough wrecked Fireflies and decided to transfer to the Canadian Air Force. After trades training for an aero engine tech. at Camp Borden he was posted to Training Command at R.C.A.F. station Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Here he was introduced to the B-25 Mitchell. There were approximately 30 Mitchells based here for training pilot trainees on instruments. A number of these Mitchells are still flying today, including N41123 (44-30254 CF-MWC)), N325N (44-86698 CG-UNO), and N62163 (44-86697). He worked and flew on these Mitchells from 1952-1959. A few funny stories came out of this stint with the Mitchells. Such as the time when a few B-25's had a training flight from Saskatoon to Penticton which is approximately 700 miles to the west, across the Rocky Mountains. Going along as ground crew support he didn't have much to do upon arrival as the 25's ran like a Swiss watch. So after securing the aircraft he proceeded to the local tavern for a few beers. Seeing that Penticton is in the heart of fruit country and the cherries were in season, the crew decided to fill the back of the aircraft with cherries for the folks back home. This trip wasn't an overnight stay and after the cherries were loaded, they proceeded back to Saskatoon. Dad volunteered to stay in the back with the fruit. After they were airborne and everyone settled in for the trip home, Dad got hungry. So thinking that no one would miss a few cherries, he proceeded to inhale a crate of them. Sometime later with a belly full of cherries and a few beers sloshing around in his stomach the natural occurrence happened at around 10,000 feet. "I'm going to get sick." There was no place to puke as every available spot was full of cherry boxes. So thinking quickly, maybe not so clearly, he decided to open the drop door and puke into the air stream. Anyone who is familiar with the workings of a B-25 personnel door knows that it opens downward and a sliding mechanism extends a ladder from within the door. So when you are cruising along at 180 knots it is pretty much impossible to open the door against the slip stream. As the urge to puke was overwhelming him he decided to stand on the door to try and force it open. He managed to get the door open a crack which was enough to stick his mouth into and let his guts reel in relief. When they touched down back at base the evidence was apparent to what happened in the back of the plane. The aft belly of the Mitchell was covered with a thick red stain all the way to the rear gunner turret. So, needless to say my father spent the rest of the following day scrubbing down the aircraft. Another interesting story to mention about his days in Saskatoon was when two pilot trainees were given some solo time. This pair were nearing the end of their training and were unleashed to play with the mighty power of the B-25 on their own. After departing the airport and flying to the required sector, they returned a short time later. After taxiing up to the ramp and shutting down the engines, the ground crew suddenly realized why the pair returned so soon. The leading edge on each wing was dented and both engine cowlings and oil cooler vents were plugged solid with wood and leaves. The ground crew was surprised to see that the pair managed to even get back alive with the amount of wood plugging the air flow through the engines. An investigation ensued and it was discovered that the two trainees had tried looping the B-25. The story goes that the pair took the plane up to altitude and tried to loop it. As anyone familiar with a 25 knows this can't be done. Evidently the plane stalled and they finely recovered the plane just as they were smashing through the tree tops. Surprising enough they didn't kill themselves and still amazingly enough they managed to get the plane back to the airport without the engines giving up on them.

With every memorable story comes the not so memorable ones but are still considered noteworthy. Anyone who is familiar with aviation knows that tragic accidents occur. This particular story was witnessed by my father while he was still stationed in Saskatoon. A flight instructor from Summerside, Prince Edward Island who trained pilots on Lockheed P2V-7 (CP-122) Neptunes was transferred to Saskatoon around 1956 or 1957. This instructor being new to the B-25 was taken out on a circuit around the field by his two pilot trainees. After landing and taxiing up to the ramp, the instructor jumped out while the engines were still running. Anyone familiar with a Neptune will know that the front personnel hatch is forward of the engines, so if a person gets out while the engines are still running will have to walk forward to stay clear of the propellers. This flight instructor being a creature of habit walked forward after exiting the running B-25. Just as he realized what he had done, he dropped to his knees to clear the propellers but was too late and got caught by one of the propellers and was decapitated in an instant.

The last memorable story my Dad recalls from his time in Saskatoon was when he made his last fruit run to Penticton. On the way home in the summer of 1959 the spur gear on the port engine which only had 30 hours on it, dropped into the reduction gear and smashed it all to hell. The propeller started free wheeling after this, and the young pilot trainee quickly had to try and feather the prop. The quick thinking pilot had to slow the starboard engine almost to a point of stalling so that the feathering pump could take hold of the free wheeling prop. After successfully feathering the port engine they quickly let down in Lethbridge, Alberta for repairs. Upon inspection of the port engine it was obvious the damage that occurred, as huge holes were in the front of the engine and all around the engine cowling.

After working on and flying in B-25's for 8 years my father was posted to Trenton, Ontario in 1959. Here he was introduced to the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, DC-3, Northstars (DC-4 with rolls-royce engines), Grumman Albatross, DeHavilland DHC-4 Caribou, Canadair C-109 Cosmopolitan and Canadair C-106 Yukon. After 8 years of this he was transferred to Edmonton, Alberta for another 7 years on DC-3's and C-130B Hercules as a flight engineer. In 1972, while still in the Air Force a group of pilots and my father purchased a B-25 from Bendix aviation. (CF-DKU (45-8835) N5672V) They wanted to make some money so they installed a main tank in the fuselage and additional tank in the nose. The plan was to haul diesel fuel to isolated areas in the Canadian Arctic. So in the spring of 1972 they started hauling diesel fuel from Yellowknife, N.W.T. to Hope Bay silver mine approximately two hours flying time north on Bathurst inlet. They were carrying approximately 1300 gallons and landing on ocean ice. By this time in my father's military career he had a civilian VFR commercial pilot's license. Aurora aviation was the name of the company and consisted of 4 partners, of these partners, two were active military pilots one an active military navigator and one a military flight engineer (Dad). Each co-owner took holidays and took their turn flying the B-25 up north hauling diesel fuel.

Then in 1973, they started hauling diesel fuel from Smithers, B.C. to Chipmunk creek (150 miles north of Smithers) for a railway right of way extension. The old 25 handled this service for some time until one unlucky day when one of the partners had a nose wheel blow out on him while landing loaded in Chipmunk Creek. The blow out caused the nose gear to collapse resulting in the propellers eating dirt. No one was hurt and the insurance company paid the partners to fix the damage themselves. After the plane was repaired and put back into service, it flew for another year hauling fuel until once again in 1974 the same pilot had another nose wheel blow on him while loaded and putting the props through the same strip once again. Well, the insurance company wasn't going to go through this again and bought CF-DKU from Aurora Aviation and put it up for auction. G&M Aircraft of St. Albert, Alberta won the bid and owned it right up to 1991 flying it as a water bomber until selling it off after being considered undesirable as a water bomber by the Canadian government.

In the spring of 1974 Dad retired from the military and went to work for Northwestern Air Lease of St.Albert, Alberta. This company operated Mitchells CF-OND (44-28866) N225AJ and CF-MWC (44-30254) N41123 as water bombers. This was the beginning of his water bombing career which lasted until he retired from flying in 1991. Just a short note to add at this time, Northwestern Air Lease also owned an Avro Lancaster which was tanked for water bombing but it did not pan out as they couldn't get the tank doors to work properly, so Northwestern ended up selling the Lancaster in 1975 to a private collector in Scotland U.K.

This first year with Northwestern Air Lease was going to be an adventure and a mystery as he never knew what was going to happen next. On one of his first training flights, the pilot assigned to train him in the fine art of dropping a plane load of snot (water, dye and fertilizer) on a fire was interesting. The actual water drop was uneventful but the take-off from the strip was the hairy event. The home base for these Mitchells as previously mentioned was St.Albert airport which consisted of a dirt runway at this time and was more like a mud runway after it rained. On this particular take off it was a mud runway, after taxiing from the ramp to the main runway, Bob (not his real name) proceeded to take-off with Dad as his co-pilot. As CF-MWC got further and further down the strip the mud got softer and softer, so after making it half-way down the runway and gaining speed (estimated at 90 knots) the mud was just too much for the gear and MWC abruptly stopped dead in it's tracks. Surprisingly enough the gear wasn't ripped off by this point. After shutting down the engines and assaying the situation, they had to use two 4x4 agriculture tractors with heavy logging chains to get MWC out of the hole it created. There was so much resistance while pulling that the chain stretched so bad that the links would not loosen up after the tension was taken off. This sort of Sanford & Son operation went on for the remainder of that fire season. Both 25's flew that year in Wood Buffalo National Park (located in the corner of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories) The following year (1975) was just as much a mystery as the year before when it came to operations. During the early years of his water bombing career with the 25's, everyone involved shared the excitement and enthusiasm when called out on a fire. So even when the fires were small and insignificant, the B-25 crews were hipped up and raring to go if it meant some flying time. On one such occasion in the summer of 1975 the crews were so pumped for the thrill of flying the Mitchells, they almost forgot the inherent danger of flying on fires and almost traded their lives for the excitement of it all. A fire was reported in Nahanni Valley National Park, Northwest Territories and the crew of OND & MWC responded eagerly and struck off to put out the fire. After flying over a 10,000 foot mountain range they dropped down to get a look at where the fire was. The bird dog (Cessna 185) which was used to guide the bombers into the fire started up a spur off Nahanni Valley to look for the fire. The owner of Northwestern Air Lease was flying OND and wasn't as anxious to start flying up some mountain pass with 900 gallons of water aboard. So Ted (not his real name) the owner decided not to follow the bird dog up the pass blindly looking for some fire that wasn't worth his life. As it turned out the pass ended in a razor back and the bird dog had to take evasive action to pull out of the pass, mean while Ted and Dad were circling overhead. Finally they spotted the fire and made a run on it, and as it turned out, the fire was nothing but a small out cropping of trees on a rocky ledge. After dropping their loads they returned to base, and were a little more selective on their future fires.

Single-engine Stalls in a B-25

In August 1944 I was instructing aviation cadets in advanced flying school in the B25 at La Junta Army Air Base, Colorado. I had already put fifteen cadets through the program since February of that year and now had four more in the class of 44-I.

It was decided by higher authority, and probably by someone who had never instructed in B25's, that we should instill confidence in our students in the stability of the B25 in single-engine flight by demonstrating a single-engine stall. A plane "stalls" when the speed is low enough and the angle at which the wing meets the air is steep enough that the airflow over the wing is no longer smooth, but turbulent. At this point, the wing loses lift, the ailerons become ineffective, and the plane starts to drop. In order to overcome this, it is necessary to lower the nose of the airplane and give the engines more power to increase the speed. You can do this maneuver with the power off (a power-off stall) or with some power on (a power-on stall) and we always had students practice these maneuvers to become familiar with the stall characteristics of the airplane. A stall while close to the ground or turning on the final approach in making a landing can result in a fatal crash, and has killed many students and fledgling pilots.

A single-engine stall is something else again. In this maneuver, one engine is shut down or simulated dead, while power still remains on the good engine. If the plane is stalled in these circumstances, the wing with the dead engine will stall out before the other wing and the plane will fall off on the wing with the dead engine. If you attempt to bring the wing up using aileron control, it exacerbates the condition, making the stall worse on the low wing and reducing it on the high. Consequently, the bank steepens and the plane can go into a tailspin. It is absolutely necessary to try to lessen the angle of bank by using the rudder controls, which can be done, and to overcome the natural tendency of a pilot to crank in aileron.

Knowing all of this, I took my two students out to demonstrate the maneuver and give them confidence in the single-engine flying ability of the B25. We climbed up to 11,000 feet (6,000 feet above the ground), went through the maneuver, and the wing dropped off dramatically. I dropped the nose, used rudder to pick up the wing, and we were flying again. The student in the left seat was so impressed that he asked if he could try it, so I said he could, cautioning him against using aileron in the recovery. Up came the nose, the plane shuddered, started falling off on the side of the dead engine, and the next thing I knew we were in the flattest and fastest tailspin I have ever seen. He had cranked in full aileron. I hollered "I've got it!", took over the controls, and tried conventional spin recovery. Airflow over the twin rudders was so strong that I couldn't budge the rudder with all my pressure on the pedal, even with the student helping out. I dumped the control column forward and was able to steepen up the spin, and finally got the rudders to respond. I broke the spin and started pulling back on the control column to recover from the dive we were in. As I attempted to pull out, we hit a high-speed stall, and went into a secondary spin. At this point I discovered that the student had cranked in full rudder trim tab to help hold the plane straight while approaching the stall -- something else he wasn't supposed to do. I remember looking over at the airspeed indicator and the altimeter. We were doing 180 mph and the altimeter was unwinding like I couldn't believe. Knowing how I had broken out of the spin before, I used the same technique, stopped the spin, cranked off the rudder trim tab so I wouldn't have to hold opposite rudder, and eased out of the dive. We pulled out about 600 feet above the ground doing about 450 mph indicated airspeed. At the rate we had been losing altitude, that 600 feet was about two seconds worth of additional tailspin. They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you crash. Don't you believe it! I was so busy trying to recover from that spin that we could have gone straight into the ground before I had time to reflect on anything.

Having exceeded the allowed limits on the airplane and having scared the wits out of ourselves in addition, I judiciously headed straight back to the field and called in for an emergency landing, not being sure a wing or one of the tail surfaces wouldn't fall off at any moment. We got on the ground O.K., taxied in, parked, shut down the engines, and got out of the plane. I started to walk away and that's when it hit me. My legs just seemed to turn to rubber and I almost fell down. I managed to make it into the ready room, but was a mite shaky. I reported to our squadron C.O. what had happened and learned that one of the other instructors had a similar experience. The next day the order requiring simulated single-engine stalls was rescinded, and we all breathed easier. I felt fortunate to be able to breathe at all.

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