Bent B-25

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Nothing on Joe Baugher's Home Page site on that serial
3290 (341st BG) shot down Apr 8, 1944 on raid on Japanese airfield on Hainan Island
3296 (41st BG, 48th BS, "Rose's Beau")
3297 crashed 40 mi SW of Ililo, Panay Oct 2, 1945 while ferrying men from the 347th FG from Palawan to Leyte for return to USA. No survivors.
 
Is that a cannon in the tail? Does not look like a M2.
It's a 'stinger'-gun (single M2). This a/c is a B-25D-30 (block 30), one of the "interim" versions manufactured in the Kansas city-factory. Blocks -30 and -35 had some similarities with the later versions H and J, because of their waist- and tail- gun stations. In fact the last B-25D-35 and the first B-25J-1 were in production at the same time. Below the same configuration seen on a "Mitchell" from the 321-st BG:


... and on one of the RAAF - "Mitchells"


The oddly shaped "Mitchell" in question is from the 42-nd BG. -"The Crusaders" and is not bent at all - it's broken at a structural joint, where the bomb bay ends. Because of the rounded shape of the engine nacelle and the rounded wing profile the plane looks like bent - it's an optical illusion. That's the exact area:



 
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You are right up to a point but the tear in the upper skins is far less than would occur if there was no compression failure (bending) lower down - probably from the top of the wing spar down. I would expect most of the compression failure will be in the bomb bay skirts as they have not rigid cross structure to prevent buckling whereas the rear fuselage is a complete structure with a rigid structure that is far less likely to bend.

Either way it must have been a spectacular arrival to collapse the nose gear and cause the rear fuselage structure to fail. It says a lot for the wing and maingear that they look okay.

The Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB have squillions of accident reports and that one is probably there. Chronic long term under-staffing and covid mean you will be lucky to get an answer inside 12 months. The normal backlog was five months pre covid.

A group of volunteers have created an index of AFRHA's holdings at Air Force History Index but it contains many errors which mainly directly stem from errors made by the persons who indexed the microfilms and partly from when the microfilms were converted to PDFs they deleted all the blank pages. These people deserve lots of bacon for the job they have done.

As an aside - if you have seen the original 1960's Sole Survivor movie that is the bolt line that was used to create the "broken back" in the aircraft for the movie. A lot of alfoil and a little spray paint made it look very broken. The aircraft was flown home to TAM (now Planes of Fame) after the film was completed. Greg P can probably provide more details.
 
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