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Written in 1986 with up-dates
"It's a Catch-22 situation". How many times a week do we
hear that phrase glow many of you remember reading the
best-selling satire on a Mediterranean B-25 Base authored
by Joseph Heller? And how many of you remember seeing the
movie by Paramount Studios, based on the book, CATCH-22?
The one that starts out in total darkness with only a dog
barking in the distance and then an Engine STARTS!!!!
Never again will that flight sequence be repeated: 16
B-25's in the air at one time..four diamonds of the
beauties. Bomb bays open and 128 bombs drop into the Sea
of Cortez. The flying leadership of the late Frank
Tallman.
It's summer, 1968, and my flying career consists of flight
instructing at the Fullerton CA. airport. Total time
slightly over 1,000 hours. One of my friends calls to tell
me about a hunch of B-25's being readied at Orange County
Airport. I went right over to Tallmantz Aviation, the
partnership of Frank Tallman and Paul Mantz. The Chief
pilot, Jim Appleby was there and after filling out the
application, I was told that other phrase we hear every
week "we'll call you".
So I waited...and waited...until one day my friend called
and said he'd been hired as a mechanic for the movie.
Apprehension got the best of me, so I returned to
Tallmantz and let Appleby know that I was still very
interested in flying for them. Two more weeks of waiting
and then the call: REPORT TO THE HANGAR MONDAY, DECember,
2, 1968.
That Monday morning there were ten of us at the Tallmantz
Hangar, Two captains and eight co-pilots. Jim Appleby and
v.p. for flight operations, Frank Pine, were in charge of
the week's activities: ground school and flight training.
After a week of comprehensive training, I became a
co-pilot on the B-25, What a shock going from an Apache
to a 3,400 HP, over 15 ton aircraft! After filling out
the necessary paperwork for the Studio, now all we had to
do was wait for our departure date.
What I hadn't known during my wait was that it isn't easy
to come up with the number of planes needed to film this
movie. When Tallmantz was given the contract, they first
had to find all those aircraft. Acquisition from as far
away as Long Island, NY. (a 3,000 mile ferry trip), Grey
Bull, Wyoming, Buckeye, Arizona, Houston, Texas,
Champaign, Illinois and other Fire Fighting bases in the
western U.S. From there they made their way to southern
California. Finding flyable planes was difficult enough,
then came engine changes, hose and glass and tire
replacements, putting on bomb bay doors and making them
work, finding turrets, guns, and other "wartime" amenities
for planes 25 years old..that was a job, and the guys at
Santa Ana did it,
It's New Year's Day, 1969. I'm part of the second flight
of B-25's to be delivered from Orange County to Mexico.
Most of us had never flown formation before and forming up
over the pacific ocean south of Newport Beach, Ca, had its
share of excitement. Getting those ponderous beauties, as
Tallman called them, to stay 100 feet apart for three and
a half hours wasn't easy. From the ground the sight must
have seemed hilarious...from the cockpit, hair-raising.
Our intermediate stop for customs and immigration checks
was Hermosillo, Mexico.
Our destination was San Carlos Bay, not far from Guaymas,
Mexico. The studio had cut down all the organ pipe cactus
for a mile around and built a 6,000' long by 200' wide
runway, complete with a taxiway all around and a hardstand
for each aircraft. It was very nice..the bad part was that
it was surrounded on three sides by mountains. That meant
we always had to land from the water side and take-off
toward the water. No matter how the wind blew and it was
always a cross wind, Our larding at our new 'base' was
without incident.
The 'base' was another Paramount perfection. A hospital,
an 'old' brick building, mess hall, control tower, bomb
dump, and enough pyramid tents to house the entire crew
and cast..details right down to the comm wire to the
squadron commander's office. You would swear you were
somewhere in the Mediterranean during WW II. My Marine
Corps rifleman days were partly spent in Sicily and
Sardinia and this 'base' could easily have been either of
those places during the war.
After our debriefing we looked up the crew from the first
flight of six aircraft that had arrived the day before.
The bunch was suffering the aftermath of drinking too much
Tequila on New Year's Eve in Mexico. Fortunately nobody
landed in jail..but came close.
The next day we were out at the 'base' reporting for duty.
BY ACT OF PARAMOUNT, I was commissioned First Lieutenant,
USAAF. My highest rank in the Corps was Corporal. Our
leather flying jackets had the squadron insignia patch: a
naked,long-haired lady riding a bomb and holding a spear
in her right hand.
Special effects did wonders at making the planes look war
weary. Oil and paint were splashed all over them, the art
work on the sides sanded to look as if they'd flown many
mission. We did have to change one thing: we had to clean
off the windows - nobody would go into 'combat' with dirty
windows! The names of some of the planes were (not all
were named) Free, Fast & Ready, Luscious Lulu, Berlin
Express, Dumbo, Denver Dumper, Booby Trap, Hot Pants,
Annzas, Laden Maiden, Superman, Vestal Virgin, aBominable
Snowman, and the one I flew the most, Passionate Paulette.
Each day we had a pilots' meeting to brief for the day's
flying, assign tower duty for the non-flyers, and get the
weather. Some flew the mail run to Los Angeles in a Cessna
310 with the film shot the previous day and returned with
the processed film. Others flew flight sequences or
training flights. Some just lounged at the beach - the
triangular fins moving about San Carlos Bay kept us out of
the water.
Our formations were flown stacked up and we used the right
echelon, diamond, and echelon of diamonds. Normally we
would land from a right echelon with the leader breaking
over the numbers and space ourselves about 2,000' in
trail.
One day when I was #4, I saw #3 hit the wake of #2 and
went sliding off to the right. He corrected back and then
hit it again, sliding to the left and almost hitting the
control tower. After we landed we heard what it was like
from the point of view of one of our pilots standing at
the base of the tower. "I watched it coming at me and was
dumbfounded. The pilot saw that he might hit the tower and
lifted the left wing, then I was knocked to the ground by
a little feller and he left footprints on my chest...just
like in the cartoons." The pilot speaking was 6"5", 265
lbs.
There were a few other incidents while filming the
picture, some funny, some almost tragic, one fatality. One
day we were flying across the field at low level as
background for a scene when we were told to go away for a
while during a set-up change, seven planes were up, and we
went looking for adventure. We found it in the form of a
sport fishing boat, We went by this guy three times at
about 15 feet. The first time he just waved, the second
time he shook his fist, the third time it looked like he
had a shotgun!!
Another scene called for Frank Tallman to cut a plastic
dummy in two with a Stinson L-5. The dummy was standing on
a swimming raft so Frank had to fly about 5 feet off the
water. They shot the scene a couple of times and then an
'insurance' shot. This time the hand of the dummy got
wedged between the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator.
Frank had no elevator control, but did his usual fine job
of flying and landed safely.
The fatality was the second unit director who also was the
aerial cameraman. I was flying in the formation he was
filming at 4,000 feet. The nose of the camera plane had a
specially built glass insert that allowed unobstructed
viewing and this set-up, perfected by Paul Mantz, made
Tallmantz the leader in aviation photo planes at the time.
The twin tail of the B-25 made another area for
unobstructed viewing if eight inches were removed from the
rear fuselage, making a 2'x 4' opening to film from. The
cameraman was filming from the rear fuselage and somehow
fell from that opening into the Gulf of California.
The most dangerous part the rest of us had in the movie
was the mass takeoff,.sixteen airplanes lined up on the
runway all at 30 inches manifold pressure...then taking
off at one to two second intervals. This scene was used
for the beginning of the movie. Can you imagine the
propwash on takeoff!!!
On the first two mass takeoffs, the plane I was in was #2,
on the third, #9, and on the fourth, #16. On the fourth
takeoff we had a runaway prop and found out after landing
that a B-25 will not taxi on one engine. Once you turn
into the dead engine the nose wheel cocks and will not
straight out because of lack of nosewheel steering.
Another area that called for special handling was the
touchy brakes.
Flying the B-25's in 1969 was a big thrill and it still is
even with another 11,000 flying hours. (note: now have
over 18,000). It started my love affair with warbirds. For
the last five years (note: 24 years) my wife and I have
owned an SNJ-5B (bn 43725) "The Lusty Lady" and use the
Catch-22 insignia for the logo. I've crewed on Race 2,
P-51 flown by Bob Love at the Reno Air Races, and have
flown many heavy aircraft from DC-3 & 4, B-707, B-727,
B-737, B-747 and DC-8, DC-10, but, my favorite will always
be the heaviest feeling of them all, the B-25.
Of the eighteen B-25's in Catch-22, most were TB-25Js.
These had been through the Hayes Conversion after WWII and
used as multi-engine trainers. After being surplused by
the Air Force, they went on serving as borate bombers
until grounded by the US Forest Service. After filming
the movie, Paramount asked Tallmantz to sell the planes
for them. The studio owned fourteen, Tallmantz owned
three, and one was flown from Baha, Mexico so full of
corrosion that it was used as the one plane that was
destroyed in the film. The studio was asking $6-7,000 each
for the aircraft. At the time the price seemed
ridiculously high.
Where are they now? Two of the camera nose equipped planes
owned by Tallmantz are for sale at this writing. The EAA
Museum in Oshkosh, WI. has one that has been fully
restored. This was a corporate plane owner by Barbara
Hutton with an airstair door, two overstuffed chairs in
the rear and a leather couch the length of the bomb bay
prior to the movie. Two (the former Hot Pants and Laden
Maiden) and probably all five of the Rlackbusche, England
B-25's are ex-Catch-22 aircraft. They were flown to
England for filming the movie "Hanover Street".
Several others are now on the Air Show Circuit: (Pacific
Princess N9856C flown by Carl Scholl and Tony Ritzman),
Briefing Time at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum (N9456Z)
flown by (the late) Jeff Ethell, and Heavenly Body
(N9185H) owned by Mike Pupich. John Crocker and the late
Jim Orton bought the Denver Dumper and resold it, one is
owned by Harry Doan (note: also deceased) in Florida. The
CAF also probably has one or two used in the movie.
Dedicated to those who are no longer with us: Frank
Tallman, Frank Pine, Tom Mooney, Skip March, Bill Reid,
Bill Fritz, and to all the rest who helped make Catch-22,
for me, a truly memorable Aviation Event.
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