P-47 Hot Rods in England

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Well, Paul was a crew chief, so I think his impressions were a bit better than most. Possibly not ... I can't say since I wasn't there. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt since I knew him and spoke with him, but I won't claim it is a fact ... just heresay from an old crew chief who was there and did it.

I also knew the guy who invented the throat microphone used in WWII US bombers. He was Jewish mechanical engineer who was a good friend of a German immigrant who was a master jeweler for Tiffany's in New York City. Long story and quite good. Suffice to say the German jeweler made it all possible even while he was being persecuted by the Government. The jeweler made it possible for them to gold plate Amuminum for the throat microphones with technology he used to make Christmas ornaments! If anyone is really interested, I'll write it up.
 
German tank crews had throat mics. Theres a dealer with a box of 25 for sale.

6439_01.JPG
 
GregP said:
I wasn't there and don't know for sure, but Paul Cherry said the first one didn't have an recoil mechanism and they had to scrap the "war weary" B-25 they used as a Guinea Pig.

Might be a "war story" or might be true, I couldn't say, but old Paul wasn't much given to telling lies in regular life or even to rambling long conversations. He mostly kept to himself and did electronic work. Might be as you say, or they might have used a different make 75, I don't know and won't speculate. In any case, the vast majority of the 75 mm cannon-armed B-25's came from North American and DID have recoil absorption.
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My understanding of the development of the cannon armed B-25 and Gunn's involvement with it is a bit different. The 75mm installation did not originate in Australia, as opposed to the strafer nose mods. developed by Gunn for the A-20 and B-25.
The process actually began before the war started with an experimental installation in a B-18. Gunn was sent back to the states to consult with North American regarding factory produced gun nose B-25, including the B-25G. After returning ro the Pacific, he flew the first G model in theater on test missions to evaluate the cannon in combat. While initially enthusiastic, his opinion changed and the 75mm gun was eventually replaced on all B-25Gs with a pair of .50 cal guns in the tunnel as well as two additional guns added to the original pair, and package guns on each side. The later cannon armed B-25H was never used by the 5th AF. I think the story of Gunn's 75mm "field mod" evolved from his known development of the
.50 cal installations. The assumption was that he did the same with the big gun. I have seen an account from a former pilot of the 38th Bomb Group in which he claims that Gunn tried a 75mm installation in a P-38!!

Duane
 
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Milosh said:
Went looking on the inet to see what I could find on Pappy Gunn and found this link,

Pappy Gunn

Also found out that Gunn didn't have a pilot rating in the USAAC. He had been flying Air Corp airplanes for one and a half years without the rating.

http://www.atomagazine.com/extras/Man_Behind_the_Gun.pdf

A really incredible man. S! Pappy
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"As an enlisted aviator, he served as a fighter pilot with the Navy's famous "Top Hat" fighter squadron and spent a tour as a flight instructor at Pensacola, Florida. While instructing, PI Gunn instructed some of the most famous names in Naval aviation, men who would rise to prominence in the World War II and post-war Navy."

"Enlisted Aviator." Love it! You don't need a college degree to be a military pilot! :evil4:
 
You could be right.

But Paul Cherry's pictures of a 75 mm cannon conversion on a B-25 in the field make me think otherwise. He was in some of the pics. I didn't ask him where they were taken. We talked about the planes.
 
GregP said:
You could be right.

But Paul Cherry's pictures of a 75 mm cannon conversion on a B-25 in the field make me think otherwise. He was in some of the pics. I didn't ask him where they were taken. We talked about the planes.
Click to expand...

No disrespect intended toward your friend, but what the picture shows vs. the the caption/description may differ. I've seen a number of pics of the original .50 cal installation performed in Australia, but none of a 75mm that can be attributed
to Pappy Gunn.

Duane
 
I didn't take it disrespectfully, but thanks anyway.

Actually Paul Cherry passed away a long time ago. When I knew him it was in the early 1980's at Motorola in Scottsdale, Arizona. That same plant is now General Dynamics and most of the people I knew are long gone from there. Paul's pictures were his, not something published. It was a scrapbook of old war pics. Somehow, I was under the impression the pics were mostly taken on island airstrips. One pic showed the scrapped B-25 they quit flying after the recoild runied it. It was pushed into the edge of the jungle and simply left there. I assume they removed the engines, props, and other useful suff, but never actually asked.

Official histories aren't always accurate. Many people think Chuck Yeager was the first to break the sound barrier but there is a large and growing array of information that says it was George Welch in the prototype F-86 Sabre a day before Chuck's "official" flight who really did it. That same plane later broke the sound barrier "officially."
 
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Greg, what is to say that the B-25 wasn't a factory produced 75mm gunned a/c? Factory 75mm a/c also suffered from metal fatigue.
 
Just Paul's account of it from the war.

Hey, I'm not stating he was right. He was a friend of mine and I believe what he said. Nobody else has to and I can't magically make his account appear as a primary source. It's just what he said over lunch for a period of time when we talked about WWII, not a historic revelation. Mostly, we didn't talk aboiut WWII.

I bet if you are friends with someone and they reveal a war story over lunch, you don't give them the third degree about chapter and verse. If you do, it will likely be the last war story you ever hear from them.

If you doubt it, that's fine, not a problem here. Too bad there aren't any B-25H's flying around today. If there were, maybe we could look at the mount, assuming it was still in stock form. Our B-25 at the museum, a B-25J, has the four fuselage-mounted gun pods that we can remove if we want. We have a clear dome in place of the dorsal turret.

We don't have an A-26 Invader but do have an A-26 machine gun nose with the eight 50's in it. Another of my favorite WWII planes ....
 
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Milosh said:
Greg, what is to say that the B-25 wasn't a factory produced 75mm gunned a/c? Factory 75mm a/c also suffered from metal fatigue.
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Look at the life expectancy of a B-25 flying in combat. I doubt metal fatigue was an issue.
 
A little over 40 years ago I was in Vietnam, crewchief on a OH-6. I have a lot of memories of that time, and my other time in the service.
But the order in which they happened, where, and when, is not always clear in my memory. I can still field strip a M-16 and probably a M-60, but I know i'd be lost if I tried to maintain a OH-6 without some serious study first.

I still race regularly, with a GoPro camera in the car usually. A lot of times things viewed on the playback are different from what I or others thought happened.

IMO the human mind is far from perfect for storing memories, sometimes you'll remember things the way you wanted them to happen.
 
I agree.

The mind plays tricks on you and usually remembers with rose-colored glasses.

I have some vivid memories of childhood, but seeing the same things today would not doubt produce adult memories instead of child memories. When I was very young, we went to Europe. My most vivid memory of the Eiffel Tower was the great hot dogs sold at the top! Today I'd no doubt remember the view as the top memory. As a kid, the hot dog got my attention.

My best memory from Viet Nam was this amazing young woman I dated. I probably should have married her.
 
tyrodtom said:
A little over 40 years ago I was in Vietnam, crewchief on a OH-6. I have a lot of memories of that time, and my other time in the service.
But the order in which they happened, where, and when, is not always clear in my memory. I can still field strip a M-16 and probably a M-60, but I know i'd be lost if I tried to maintain a OH-6 without some serious study first.

I still race regularly, with a GoPro camera in the car usually. A lot of times things viewed on the playback are different from what I or others thought happened.

IMO the human mind is far from perfect for storing memories, sometimes you'll remember things the way you wanted them to happen.
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What outfit were you with when you crewed the Loach?

Duane
 
2/17th Cav. most of the time.
Things got kind of elastic during the drawdown of 71-72.
 
tyrodtom said:
2/17th Cav. most of the time.
Things got kind of elastic during the drawdown of 71-72.
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Both in the 101st, there at the same time. Go figure.
If you were at Hue/Phu Bai airfield you were right down the road from me. I flew with B/159th Avn. Bn.(Varsity), the Chinook outfit. I left in Feb. '72.

Duane

If I remember correctly, you guys marked targets for us on flame drop missions.
 
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Injured in Lam Son 719., I left VN on April fools day, April 71. I think.
Jog my memory, I pretty sure those were after I left.
 
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