Tanker History - B-25 Mitchell Tankers in Canada (1980s)

I was in the mood for a little air tanker history today. Some of you may recall that I wrote a series on the B-25 in late June and early July 2010, covering her service in World War II and her service as an air tanker in Canada. My articles with the B-25 label may be found here (most recent article on top).

At least one of these videos is a rerun, but as I have said before, reruns are fun. Enjoy.


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B-17 and B-25 over AZ

H5 - WWII Bombers over Arizona Landscape from H5 Productions on Vimeo.

Here is a nice video showing a restored B-17 and B-25 in action over Arizona. I thought that this would be a nice way to wrap up the series of the B-17's service as a tanker. For more on the video, see this vimeo page. If I am not mistaken, both aircraft in this video are owned by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. If that is the case, then the B-17 that you are seeing is Sentimental Journey formerly seeing service as a fire bomber for Aero Union.

This is one of my favorite videos. Enjoy.

Added on February 1, 2017. I had to make a couple of changes to get the embed code to the video to work, it should now work in your browser. If it does not, just click on H5 - WWII Bombers over Arizona Landscape to go to the vimeo page where you can watch the video

B-25 Mitchell - Pacific Prowler

Edited on February 1, 2017. I had to delete my original article about the B-25 Mitchell, Pacific Prowler, based on an AOPA article and video from August 2010 because the links no longer worked. Other links referenced in the same article were also dead links. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to find some other videos about the Pacific Prowler, a restored B-25 Mitchell.


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B-25 Mitchell: around the 'net

I am going to wrap up, at least for now, this series on the B-25 Mitchell air with links to sites focusing on the use of the B-25 as an air tanker.

Larry Kraus sent me these two links a few weeks ago because he thought that the links would help me with my research, and they did.

• North American B-25 Survivors.
• forum thread on B-25 tanker pilot exploits.

Another friend sent told me about scalefirebombers, a website serving as a reference for those who build air tanker models. Among other things, they have a good collection of photographs of many aircraft that served as air tankers, including but not limited to the B-25 Mitchell with lots of photos of taken in both the U.S.A and Canada.

Enjoy!

B-25 and other war birds

You may want to go here and read what the person who posted this video to youtube has to say about the history of this video clip, along with a few words about the planes. To do this, click the arrow to the right of the description about the video to read the full text. The comments are also interesting.

I believe that the planes that you will see  in the beginning of the vieoe, in order are:

TBM Avenger
Vought F4U Corsair
Grumman F4F Wildcat

B-25s
1. Pacific Princess. More information on the Pacific Princess may be found here.
2. Heavenly Body
3. In the Mood

The fighter at about 9:20  in is a F-14 Tomcat.

The plane near the end (9:55 in) is a C-130 with JATO jet assist on take-off.

Enjoy!

Flying in the nose compartment of a B-25

I hope that you enjoy this video, flying in the nose compartment of the B-25 Mitchell known as the Tondelayo

B-25 Airtanker in Action (1984)

Here is video shot in 1984 of B-25 Mitchell Airtankers fighting a fire in the Canadian North West Territories. Enjoy! I believe that the last of the B-25 tankers retired from fire service in the early 1990s.

Rudy Billberg: B-25 air tankers in Alaska (1960s)

In my lead in to this series of articles on the B-25, I mentioned that my inspiration this series was reading a book by Rudy Billberg, In the Shadow of Eagles: From Barnstormer to Alaska Bush Pilot, A Flyer's Story. Rudy, born in 1916, grew up and learned to fly in northern Minnesota. If you read his book than you will know how true it is when he writes of his journey as an aviator from barnstorming to being a bush pilot in Alaska. Among other things he spent a few summers in the 1960s flying B-25's fire tankers for the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

I got to know the B-25 through Rudy's writing of summers flying B-25 tankers. By the time he flew the B-25 air tanker, I think that he had been flying for almost thirty years. He also spent at least one summer flying Smokejumpers in a DC-3. Rudy has this way of making many of the planes he flew "come alive." And his writing about the B-25 was no exception:

It was a thrill to fly the B-25. When empty, that airplane performed like no other (Billberg, 248).

He goes on to talk about the process of dumping borate (the retardant that he used). Borate was heavy, about 11 pounds per gallon. The tank capacity on the B-25 was 1,000 gallons for a total load of 11,000 pounds. Speaking of borate, he says:

This is much heavier than the 3,000 pound bomb load the airplane was designed to carry. ... Flying this overload would have been extremely dangerous except for one thing: if an engine failed, even during takeoff, the borate could be dumped in six seconds. (Billberg, 249).

He goes on to talk about drops on a fire:

When dumping borate on a forest fire, I had to really be on my toes, for I commonly had to fly as low as 200 feet. The fire was often on a hillside, in a hole, or in a mountain valley. Two possibilities that I always had to keep in mind were engine failure and gate failure. ... Sometimes I circled a fire for 20 minutes or more figuring out how to get out of a run if an engine or a gate failed. It was the kind of flying that took all the forethought and concentration I could muster. (Billberg, 249-50).

Note: The B-25 tankers flew for only a couple of seasons in the lower 48 before being permanently withdrawn from service for safety considerations. In addition to their service in Alaska, the Canadians used B-25 tankers until the early 1990s.

Billgerg, Rudy (as told to Jim Rearden). 1992 (third edition 1999). In the Shadow of Eagles: From Barnstormer to Alaska Bush Pilot, A Flyer's Story. Anchorage AK: Alaska Northway Books.

Return of the oldest B-25 to America

This is a short video on the return of "Grumpy", a B-25 WWII bomber (serial # 43-3318) to the U.S. For more information go here.

B-25 series to resume

I will soon be resuming the series of articles that I began last week, if not today than sometime over the weekend.

B-25 in WWII Pacific Theatre

I am posting a four part video series shot by WWII troops from "Lefty's Wolk Pack", 7th Army Air Force, 41st Bomb Group, 48th Bomb Squadron in the South Pacific. Allow about 20 minutes for all four. The B-25's are shown in parts 3 and 4.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4

About the B-25: Doolittle's Raid

April 18, 1942. 16 B-25 Mitchells led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle on a bombing raid to Toyko. USAAF crews underwent extensive training in San Francisco before sailing on the carrier Hornet. The plan was that the B-25’s would launch from the Hornet 400 miles from Tokyo on April 18, 1942, bombing Tokyo after night fall and then flying to a friendly air field in China. Unfortunately, the Hornet was discovered by Japenese forces when she was 650 miles from Tokyo. The B-25’s took off early, carrying as much extra fuel as possible. Although they arrived in daylight, the raid was a success. They did achieve a measure of surprise. The damage was minimal, but the Americans had made a statement.

The B-25s did not fare well. All or most were lost when they ran out of fuel. The crews either bailed out or crash landed, with most surviving including Doolittle.

About the B-25 Specifications

I found a couple of websites that provide an overview of the development of the B-25 in the late 1930s for use as a medium bomber including information about the different models of the B-25 from the B-25A to the B-25B used in the Doolittle Raid through models C-H, to the B-25J that was eventually used as a fire fighting air tanker, and later models. These websites may be found here and here. Both sites are worth checking out, I hope that you take a few moments to do so.

At least some of the B-25’s that, after being modified, saw service, in some cases limited service, as fire fighting air tankers were model J’s. Fortunately, this site, that I referred you to in the preceding paragraph has specifications for a B-25 model J that I am reproducing here.

North American B-25J “Mitchell” Medium Bomber

Dimensions
Wing span: 67 ft. 7 in.
Length: 51 ft
Height: 16 ft. 4 in.
Wing Area: 610 sq. ft.

Weights:
Empty: 19,530 lb.
Gross: 26,122 lb.
Maximum take-off: 35,000 lb.

Performance:
Maximum speed: 285 mph (458 kph) at 15,000 ft.
Cruising speed: 230 mph (370 kph)
Service ceiling: 24,200 ft
Normal range: 1,350 miles with 3,000 lbs. of bombs
Maximum range: 2,200 miles with ferry tanks

Powerplant:
Two R-2600-29 Wright ‘Cyclone’ 14 cylinder, air cooled radial engines development 1,700 hp each for take-off.

Armament:
Eighteen .50 caliber M-2 Colt-Browning machine guns. Up to 3,200 lbs. of bombs.

B-25 Mitchell: coming attractions

Two things happened recently that drew my attention to the B-25 Mitchell, a WW II medium bomber that saw limited use as an air tanker in the lower 48 and more extensive service as an air tanker in Alaska and Canada. The first thing was reading a book, In the Shadow of Eagles: From Barnstormer to Alaska Bush Pilot, written by Rudy Billberg. I’ll write more on Rudy in a little later article next week. For now, suffice it to say that Rudy flew a B-25 for a few fire seasons in the mid 1960s in the State of Alaska. The second was watching Pearl Harbor recently on cable, where I watched the dramatic re-enactment of Dolittle’s raid on Japan in early 1942 using B-25’s.

There is a long list of historical aircraft, most of them former military aircraft, that have seen service as air tankers at one time or another. It has been on my mind for awhile now to write about some of these aircraft, its military (and/or civilian use), its use as an airtanker, and restored versions.

After reading Rudy’s book, I got interested in the history of the B-25 and quickly found out about her use in Dolittle’s raid. So when Pearl Harbor was showing on cable recently, I took the opportunity to watch the portion of the movie with the dramatic re-enactment of Doolittle’s raid. And I saw the B-25’s used in the movie.

Given these two events, I decided to write about the B-25. I am still in the process of working out this series of article as I write this, but I do have the next couple of articles worked out:

June 23: About the B-25
June 25: Dolittle’s raid
June 28: B-25 in WW II, South Pacific Theatre