B-25 weapons thread

Micdrow said:

Yves, I dont remember where I found this picture but I know how interested you are in waist gun modifications. First time I had seen something like this one.

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Paul, thank you!
I already have the same picture, but at least now it's posted here as well. These are Marines and the a/c is a modified PBJ-1D. It's basically a very similar mod to a B-25D2 with waist windows, tail gun, blister guns etc. Interestingly the Marines used the same type of moveable enclosure on the late PBJ-1J too (note below the non standard wind deflector):

I have a photo of the modified waist window on a PBJ-1J but without the enclosure:

The famous photos with a Japanese officer (2nd Lt. Minoru Wada) giving instructions to USMC bombers, show the exact same waist window with an additional frame with rounded corners:


For comparison below is a photo of a "standard modification" PBJ-1D (possibly from the Kansas/Fairfax mod centre but could be from elsewhere as well) with enclosed waist windows (fixed plexi) and as far as I can see no wind deflectors.

Cheers!

Yves.

What is that on the wing tip in the fourth photo - radar? camera?

It was the radar antenna, but it didn't function well in that location. Late in the war some PBJ-1Js moved it to the nose, which turned a great lookin aircraft into an ugly one.

MiTasol said:

Yves.

What is that on the wing tip in the fourth photo - radar? camera?

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As explained above.
The wiring of the wing antenna was too long and caused some interference. Nevertheless wing mounted radar antennae have been used until the end of the war, depending on the MB-squadron. AFAIK the only squadron to use the "hose nose" on a PBJ-1J was VMB 612 (as shown in the previous post).
The photos I have shown above are of PBJs from VMB 611. This unit never used the "hose nose" with the J-model - one can see it on the photos with the Japanese officer I posted. Here's another example showing the two types of the radar-antenna housing in the same squadron but on two different PBJ-versions:

On the other hand the canon equipped PBJ-1H of VMB 613 couldn't use another version of the radar-antenna but the wing mounted:

Same with the 8-gun nosed strafers (e.g. from VMB 413):