Colling's fly in at our local airport

[pinehilljoe]

Our local airport had a fly in from Collings. The weather didn't cooperate, no flying today. Sorry for the typo in the title, if a moderator can edit titles please do.

 

[chuter]

Collings is great (even if they did "steal" the Littlefield Collection from my backyard - lol). Their B-25 is painted as the (probably) most famous aircraft of the Air Apaches. An interesting note: almost without exception the 345th removed the little spring-loaded nose-strut door* from their B-25s, as is seen on a lot of other units' B-25s in the Pacific. Spotting a 345th B-25 with that door on is like spotting an eight gun nose plane with side-pack guns - lol. The only reason I can imagine this was so common was for the ventilation. But ventilating the nose wheel well? No clue. Maybe it was just a nuisance.


*This door allowed the wheel well door to close after gear extension as it would deflect away from the leg.

 

[Wildcat]

Nice pics!