Grissom Air Museum B-25 question

[mustangdriver]

Here is a pic of some damage to the B-25 at the musem. I was told at one time that it was due to the airframe being overstressed. THen today someone told me that it was due to damage during moving it around the base. What do you guys think?

[Pat Carry]

A little Botox is needed for those wrinkles!

[bdk]

Here is a pic of some damage to the B-25 at the musem. I was told at one time that it was due to the airframe being overstressed. THen today someone told me that it was due to damage during moving it around the base. What do you guys think?

Clearly it was overstressed. Maybe the nosegear collapsed at some time in the past? I wouldn't expect there to be sufficient structural load in flight to cause that. It isn't like the wrinkled fuselage of a B-52, it is too localized.

[N3Njeff]

The airplane was probably on a pole at one time and maybe some crane operator got a bit anxious on bringing it down.

[Steve Nelson]

I don't think she was ever on a pole, but according to the Registry she was used for firefighting prior to starring in "Catch 22," so I'm sure she was "rode hard and put away wet" on many occasions. The Registry says she went from Tallmantz to the Museum in 1974..was she flown to the museum, or trucked in?

SN

[seabee1526]

It's "oilcanning" from plowing through rough seas.

[mustangdriver]

I am pretty sure that it was flown in.

[C45 driver]

An older gent who told us he instructed in B25s way back when said you could always tell a B25 that had been rolled (badly) as the fuselage was deformed and the centersection was wrinkled. Ugh. It could be true, as the planes are rated for 2.8G...considering the assymetric G applied in a badly done roll, this could be the results. Does the other side have same or similar damage?

THREAD DRIFT BELOW - WARNING!
I gotta add - some of the folks who come up & start talking at airshows are real gems. Their stories will raise the hair on your neck. I met a Filipino fella at the OK airshow last year - he was interned by the Japanese in 1942 when he was 10, and his duties in the camp were basically FAC duties for the Marine PBJs by arranging fairly large whitewashed stones in an open area near the camp: the stones denoted direction and distance of nearby Japanese targets, but he didn't know it until after the war when a B25 pilot visited & told him what he had done. He touched our airplane like it was a friends' gravestone... He had never seen one of the Blue planes up close before. Amazing stuff indeed.

Carry on!
Mark

[mustangdriver]

Thanks Mark. It does have the same style damage on the other side. Growing up my best friends grandfather who was also my next door neighbor was a pilot in VMB-413 and flew PBJ's. he mentioned that one pilot on his last mission before going home, rolled a PBJ. he said that the CO was pretty mad, but didn't press any punishment as the guy was going home.

[Django]

So if I understand this correctly, a B-25 is not to be rolled?

[bdk]

Well, Bob Hoover could roll an Aero Commander quite successfully, but they are not an aerobatic capable plane either.

[gary1954]

In a picture of this B-25 that Stoney provided us with, she was not wrinkled during the production of Catch 22.
In an old black and white I have of her at Grissom, she was sitting with her landing gear down on three concrete pylons about a couple of feet off the ground. the port side was pretty wrinkled, kinda looked like that Buff wrinkle ya know what I mean, so she must have been damaged either at Orange County, or there at Grissom while she was being hoisted to the pylons. My guess is an improper rigging during the original hoist. but this is just my opinion.