Article Type: Military History
Article Date: December 09, 2002
First to Attack Japan
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B-25J Today  |
The North American B-25 “Mitchell” was the first American airplane to attack the Japanese homeland with the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It was used under Lend-Lease by Russia, China and in Great Britain it was known simply as the Mitchell. It was named for Billy Mitchell who pioneered the idea that the bomber could be effective against heavy warships as deployed in WWI. The USAAF used B-25s in all theaters of the war. 9,632 of all models were built, but one sub-model was different—the B-25 J-32 was the pinnacle Mitchell for firepower.
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| A Mitchell III |
Development
North American designated the 1938 Army Air Corps requirement for a twin-engine, medium bomber the NA-40. The first were delivered in 1940. The plane was sturdy and possessed good flying characteristics and was usually called an “honest” airplane by its pilots.
The successful “C” and “D” models delivered their bombs and had substantial defensive armament for a “small” bomber. But with the “G” model came a new approach and a 75mm naval cannon on the solid nose! Till then the greenhouse nose housed the navigator who had access to a fifty caliber MG. With the “G” the navigator/cannoneer got to shoot some heavy ordnance and four Browning .50s were fixed above the 75mm to fire forward by the pilot. An additional four “package guns” were fixed in pairs on each side of the fuselage.
The final armament was pioneered by the fabled Paul “Pappy” Gunn who wrought havoc on Japanese shipping in the Pacific with his B-25. He found the cannon accurate but only about four rounds could be fired on a given attack run. The Bendix power turret with its two fifties along with the two waist fifties and the tail with its two were retained.
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| Doolittle “B” & “H” With Cannon |
Many “G”s had the 75mm removed and replaced by a pair of fifties. The “H” model’s five-man crew ultimately had eight .50s with 400 RPG and the 75mm firing forward. The dorsal turret had 400 RPG and the waist guns each had 200 rounds. The tail gunner carried 600 RPG. It could still carry 3,200 lbs. of bombs or a 2,000 lb. torpedo.
The “J” was the culmination of Mitchell power. With the removal of the 75mm, it mounted eight fifties in pairs in the nose and two more on each strengthened fuselage side along with the normal defensive armament of the “H.” Early “J”s, like the –15, had the single fifty in the glazed nose with four package guns but later sub-models beginning with the –27 through the –32 had solid noses with the twelve-gun armament. “Kits” upgraded many “J”s in the field to this configuration. Four 5” rockets could be attached to the wings. By the spring of 1944 the B-25s were used for low-level operations almost exclusively in the Pacific.
The B-25J-27 to –32s had the same wingspan of 67.5’ and length of just under 53’. But maximum laden weight was up to 43,000 lbs. over the “D” at 33,000 lbs. This brought top speed down to 275 MPH at 15,000 feet from 310 MPH using the same Wright Cyclone R-2600-29 engines rated at 1,850 HP for war emergency and take-off with the two-stage superchargers. “J”s usually operated at about 200 MPH. They could climb at 1, 110 FPM and could range 275 miles with a 3,200 lb. bomb load translating to about 5.5 hours from its 916 gallons of fuel. The ceiling was about 25,000 feet.
All in all these planes were devilishly well armed. And forward firing potency could be increased when the top turret trained its pair of guns at the pilot’s target. The fixed fifties were angled at minus six degrees for convergence at 600 feet allowing 175 rounds per second firing rate from the fourteen weapons making for a total of 3,200 kilowatts of gun power. (See “Which Gun” article for more on weapon power)
The crew consisted of a pilot, navigator/radio operator, flight engineer/dorsal gunner, midships gunner, and tail gunner.
A Pacific Op
In December 1944 William Goodrich was a strafer pilot in a B-25J-32 of the 17th Tactical Recon Squadron of the 38th Bomb Group that took off from Luzon’s Lingayen steel mat airstrip to attack Sanah Airdrome on Hainan Island off the China coast. It was in Japanese hands for years and was heavily fortified.
After winning money and liquor in a high stakes poker game that ended at 2 a.m., Goodrich got only three hours sleep before the 5 a.m. breakfast of pancakes from the field kitchen.
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| Goodrich’s B-25J-32 |
The twelve B-25s climbed out to 6,000 feet for an 8.5-hour flight, which was beyond the normal endurance only with strict fuel management.
At fifty miles from Hainan the group dropped to fifty feet to avoid radar detection. B-24s were supposed to precede the B-25s and clobber the area to make for easier ground attack by the group. But when Hainan was sighted it was obvious that they’d not been there and Japanese destroyers and cruisers were now berthed right alongside the airport.
The B-25 leader then did a dumb thing—he decided to circle and wait for the B-24s. This defeated any surprise by the attack planes since fighters now scrambled from the airstrip. Once seen, the leader changed orders for planes to break at ten-second intervals and sweep through a large canyon that opened into a plain where the airfield was.
The enemy had every gun trained on the obvious route, including the naval rifles on the ships as fighters waited like vultures to pounce on the B-25s that emerged from the gauntlet.
Into The Fire
Goodrich’s ship was toward the end of the line of twelve. As he blasted out of the canyon mouth all types of shells were bursting as they met the B-25s. The front running planes had got a good start on the damage and Goodrich met the wall of fire with the fifties. He splattered a building as he leveled out at 325 MPH a mere 20’ above the ground. API sprayed out of the Mitchell’s nose like angry bees stinging their targets. Pinging sounds meant the B-25 was taking damage when Goodrich heard a big bang as his bomb load hit a hanger.
The plane was yawing and he input full opposite rudder with almost no effect! But little by little she came under control and straightened out. The ship zoomed to 500 feet edging towards the ocean.
Just then a Zero bore in from about 6,000 feet at 1 o’clock in a diving frontal attack. Goodrich held the triggers down and a full side of fifties opened a path of tracers ahead. The hapless Zero began smoking and passed under the B-25 to crash.
With some breathing room the bomber went flat out as fighters tried to unsuccessful firing passes for fifteen minutes. More holes pierced the aluminum skin. But Goodrich pulled under a group of five B-25s for protection and the fighters gave up..
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| Missing Tail |
When Goodrich finally got a damage report he was told the “whole right tail and rudder is gone!” The right waist gun was blown away as well. He managed to coax some control out of his ship and climbed to 5,000 feet. Little lateral control was to be found but he could turn.
The crew decided on a landing over ditching or bail out and at 180 MPH the big plane chirped the tires coming in hot.
Once the engines were shut down the extent of the damage was evident. Goodrich really was surprised the plane even flew at all, much less the four hours to base.
The men in the rear compartment had the worst of it. The tail gunner saw the tail blow away a foot from his seat and received a minor arm wound. The radioman/gunner on the waist gun took a close 40mm hit that blew the Browning out of his hands and through the side of the ship along with his pistol and holster off his hip. The radio was hit also.
After a day’s rest the crew got a new plane and went another fifty missions.
Big Gun
A year and a half earlier the 75mm Mitchell was cutting its teeth in Paul “Pappy” Gunn’s B-25. The initial usage was on August 28, 1943. Gen George Kinney assigned the cannoned plane to Gunn who loved it at first sight.
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| Lt. Col. Paul ‘Pappy’ Gunn |
On that day Gunn was attached to twenty-five B-25s with nine P-38 escorts that were on a Japanese barge hunt off Cape Gloucester. (Gunn, like Greg Boyington, both received the “Pappy” moniker by squadron mates due to the fact that they were a few years older than the rest of the “kids.”) The party ran across two destroyers and Gunn made runs on the larger of the two vessels. He scored seven hits but the tin can didn’t even slow down.
Impatient with things, two other B-25 pilots asked the cannon pilot to step aside so they could do the job right. They skip-bombed 1,000 pounders into them splitting the ships in two. Barges were encountered and several were sunk by the bomb-carrying B-25s as the P-38s cleaned up with eight Japanese fighters shot down of fifteen that interfered.
Pappy flew along sulking that his pet gun installation had not shown its worth. But looking ahead at the airfield at Cape Gloucester Gunn saw his chance.
”Just landing was a Nip two-engined transport plane,” he recalled as he pushed open the throttles to surge ahead of the group and fire his two remaining 75mm rounds at the taxiing plane.
“One of the high explosive shells hit the left engine and the other the cockpit. The transport literally disintegrated” Gunn related to General Kinney. “General, no fooling, as I passed over that Nip plane there were pieces of Jap higher than I was.”
Before hostilities Gunn operated a small airline in the Philippines. When he joined the Air Force in Australia he learned his wife and children were captured by the Japanese and thrown into a prison camp. He lived only to kill Japanese and return to the Philippines.
Before the 1944 MacArthur invasion Gunn had an idea to slow down the enemy by attacking the enemy aircraft at Manila. The Japanese used the two-mile long, wide Taft Boulevard for a landing strip and it was cluttered with parked planes. Though range was too long for even a B-25 from New Guinea, Gunn envisioned putting drop tanks on a twelve-gun “J” and removing the top turret to make the trip alone. He calculated he could fly in, surprise the enemy, wreak havoc and slip away to ditch near a waiting submarine. Kinney vetoed the idea. But such was the fearless attitude of men like Gunn.
Soon after the Philippine invasion, Gunn was wounded in the arm while on the ground during an air attack putting him out of action for the remainder of the war.
After the war Gunn returned to his airline business, but flying a surplus C-45 in a violent thunderstorm he was killed in Luzon jungle.
