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Thanks David, you might find this interesting as I did, it has the bomb bay doors modified to carry a pair of 4.5 inch rockets for a B-25. Kind of reminds me of the James Bond type stuff. Nothing like a little extra forward fire power by opening the bomb bays with a pair of rockets. Added manual for 4.5 inch rockets for aircraft as well located under the pictures. Another interesting set of pictures of a rotary system tested on a B-25 with these rockets. Pictures from the book B-25 The Ultimate Look by William Wolf.
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By the way, Paul...have you read about Pappy Gunn's custom strafers and other shenanigans early in the war?
I understand that one of his B-25s had an Oldsmobile 37mm cannon installed, which was pilfered from a P-39.
Major Gunn's custom gunships were adopted by North American (through Jack Fox's direction) and introduced as the B-25G, so it appears that a field mod did, in fact, become a standard.
Little off topic but betting a lot of aircrews wished this was there ground crew during the war.
Other than fuel tank modifications has any one ever seen modifications done to the Mitchell by the British or the Soviets. I know on some American aircraft the Soviets installed there machine guns but so far have not found any Mitchells armed up with Soviet weapons.
Most probably weapons modifications on B-25 in VVS were limited to bomb loads only. Lend leased bombs, Soviet and even German ones were used. I don't remember anything about field modifications of machine gun installations. Overall, Soviet crews liked weapons of B-25 except the early (B-25D, I guess?) variant with belly turret which was considered unreliable and not really necessary. Extra waist guns and rear gun were requested and they were installed in US, not on the fields in USSR.
I was going through some pictures on my hard drive when I noticed this under the fuselage. Black arrows pointing to a pipe running along the fuselage. Anybody have any idea's what its for.
Thanks Paul
It's a gun gas vent for the additional nose guns. Seen on B-25 from the 345-th BG.:
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"Cactus Kitten" was a B-25J-11-NC, s/n 43-36041 from 501-th BS./ 345-th BG. and had 5 nose guns:
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It was a standard mod to (almost) all PBJ-1D of the USMC:
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Just FWIW: LONG ago (I was a kid, which was LONG ago!) one of the ag pilots at our duster strip had flown a B-25 gunships. He said that with one round loaded, with a good navigator (or whatever) he could get off three 75mm rounds in one pass. I forget the zeroed range but probably c. 500 yds which meant that at first he had to hold high, and getting closer he had to hold low.
Yep, difference in air pressure always works!Must have worked like a vacuum effect to draw out the smoke.