Barbie III and Company

A Long Time Ago

The famous Mitchell and the not-too-well-known cannon-nose version of this warbird entered the war with a tongue-in-cheek idea. It was born from one man’s determination to put some real punch into the firepower of a B-25. The low level strafing role of this attack bomber had already been established in the South Pacific and, to many, the killing power was mediocre. In many of the strafing runs, the fifty-caliber slugs cut down Japanese personnel, demolished wood and tin buildings and tore wheeled vehicles in half.  However, it fell far short when it came to steel, armor plate, dirt fortifications and cement pillboxes. Slab-sided supply barges, armored vehicles, tanks and ships simply shook off the impact and continued on.

Tiring of the lack of punch, one enterprising pilot traded a case of scotch whiskey to an artillery crew (who were being shipped out) for their 75MM cannon, which was a straightforward field artillery piece.   With a lot of ingenuity and modification, the stripped-down cannon was bolted into the reinforced nose of a B-25. While some said a prayer, some crossed their fingers and a few did their beads, the cannon worked. The B-25 bounced with the recoil but stayed together as the crew sent a few experimental rounds down the barrel. In the air, the cannon didn’t perform any differently but some thought that the aircraft actually stopped flying as the airframe absorbed the recoil.

When it came to targeting, they came up with the simple solution of bore-sighting the cannon with the machine guns, and both were zeroed in at the same range. Once the machine gun projectiles found the target, the pilot would trigger off a cannon round or two during his strafing run. The designation “cannoneer” entered the crew tasks for the crewmember, many times also serving as flight engineer, who loaded and cleared the cannon.

North American heard about the modification, came for a look, liked what they saw, went back to the drawing board and soon produced one thousand cannon-nose B-25’s designated as the “G” and, later, as the “H” models. This remarkable, though not well-known, cannon-nose version was the most heavily armed aircraft to see continuous service in World War II. With an unmuffled exhaust stack coupled to each massive engine cylinder, it also became the noisiest. The popping and crackling exhaust at idle and the incredible, earth-shaking blast at power was overwhelming and recognizable to all who came into contact with her.

The cannon-nose B-25H was nothing more than a short, blunt-nosed killing machine. Its cannon, complemented by four, fifty caliber machine guns in the nose, with two more in side packs and two in the top turret, locked and facing forward provided an unheard-of concentration of forward firepower. Two more machine guns in the waist and two more in the tail made the “H” a formidable foe whether it was coming or going. Some Japanese defenders in Burma and the South Pacific called her the “Twin-Tailed Demon.” She executed her savage mission of death and destruction at mast and treetop levels day after relentless day.

The impact of her firepower could (and at times did) rip in half Japanese coastal supply ships up to and including gun ships and light destroyers. Supply tugs and their string of cumbersome barges caught scurrying out in open water from island to island would snap apart like plastic toys and disintegrate as the wall of searing projectiles found their mark.

The following story takes a unique approach to the small but decisive part played by the B-25 in the air war with Japan. It touches on the history from time to time but spends most of its pages telling a fascinating, true story of the discovery and restoration of a rare B-25H, fifty years after its manufacture and long after its deadly missions had ended.

Our cannon-nose B-25H, serial number 43-4106, was the second of its series to roll off the assembly line in 1943. The first H model, 43-4105 has disappeared into oblivion. Two other, non-airworthy, cannon-noses are known to exist in museums. For years, I referred to our warbird as “06” as she had no name or paint scheme during this period. We would eventually name her and decide on an authentic paint scheme as we neared a decade of meticulous restoration on this very rare B-25.

06 was rescued from unknown fate on a farm in Northern Illinois where she had lain idle for years. She reposed on stubbles of green grass, her tires having worn depressions in the ground that had closed around them more tightly with each freeze and thaw cycle until they were held in a vice-like grip. Her odd paint job of red and white was scratched, faded and blotched and indicated that she had been put to civilian use after the war. The de-militarized interior, still decorated in musty olive drab, was stripped of its armament, was worn from decades of use, stiff from years of inactivity but was, more or less, intact.

Occupation by generations of nesting birds and angry wasps, each determined to defend their sweltering summer home at all costs, made entry in the summer risky. The (original) olive drab paint was cracked and peeling, hanging from the sides and top of the interior like Spanish moss from a tree. Sagging cables and wires wove tortuous paths through the exposed framework that formed the bulkheads of the fuselage. Years of dust, debris, bird droppings, feathers and grassy nest materials littered every horizontal surface and had accumulated in every corner. 

The double-rowed, fourteen cylinder Wright Cyclone R-2600-29 engines, their power silenced for years, sported rusty and unreadable engine manufacture plates. Oil that once oozed black through every opening in the engine cowling, showed its faint shadows of a telltale stain. Traces of red hydraulic fluid, long ago dried up, left its pale imprint on the once-polished landing gear struts, now dulled by years of non-use. Tires were checked and sagged with age; antenna wires were missing; glass was flecked and yellow from the ravages of weather; zus fasteners and bolts were ringed with rust. But the neglected and forlorn Mitchell still reflected a haunting image of the energy and purpose of an era that has passed into history.

Standing next to this medium bomber, you could close your eyes and, with a vivid imagination, be taken back to the early 1940’s. In the silence of early morning, you could hear the unmistakable deep rumble of her great engines. Your mind would see an olive drab B-25 banking steeply over an enemy-held island in the Pacific or a Japanese airbase, slashed into the deep, endless jungle of Burma, as it prepared to attack.  Your heart beats faster with anticipation, fear and excitement as the B-25 now angles downward, throttles advanced to war emergency, it hurls itself toward the enemy. Your thoughts race with the Mitchell at your side.

You reach out and your fingers touch. Yes, she is there; she is real, she is awesome and you are insignificant alongside of her. She is the shadow of a time when the enemy was implacable but know, when boys became heroes as they grew to manhood and when a nation was called to come to the defense of a world that had not yet realized its potential.

With reluctance, you walk away. Your thoughts are yours, alo