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MITCHELLS OVER MEXICO
or 130 combat free hours in a B-25 over the Sea of Cortez
written and photos by L.P."Stoney" Stonich
"It's a Catch-22 situation". How many times have you
heard that phrase? How many of you remember reading the
satire "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, based on a B-25
squadron in the Mediterranean in WW II. Paramount Studios
made a movie based on this novel in 1969.
The movie started in total darkness with only a dog
barking in the distance...then a B-25 ENGINE STARTS!!! The
scene lightens as sixteen B-25's taxi out to the runway
and make a mass takeoff, never again will that fight
sequence be repeated. Sixteen B-25's in four diamonds in
diamond, on their bomb run, the bomb bay doors open and
128 bombs plunge down in to the Sea of Cortez. All this
under the flying leadership of the late Frank Tallman.
It's summer, 1968, and my flying career consists of
flight instructing at Fullerton, CA. with slightly over
1,000 hours. A friend of mine called to tell me that some
B-25's were being readied for a movie at Orange County
Airport at Tallmantz Aviation (Tallmantz was a partnership
between Paul Mantz and Frank Tallman). I immediately went
there to see about flying in the movie. There I talked to
the Chief Pilot, Jim Appleby, and filled out an
application, I was told that other phrase we hear all the
time "Don't call us, We'll call you".
So I waited for that call..and waited..until one day
my friend called to say he had just been hired as a
mechanic for the movie. Apprehension got the better 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 they called: report to the hangar
Monday, Dec. 2, 1968!
That Monday morning there were ten of us at the
Tallmantz Hangar. Two Captains and ten Co-pilots. Chief
Pilot Jim Appleby and V.P. for Flight Operation, Frank
Pine, were in charge of the weeks activities: ground
school and flight training. What a shock going from a 160
h.p Apache to a 1,700 h.p. per engine, over 15 ton
airplane! After filling out more paperwork for Paramount
Studios, we completed our training and stood by for our
departure date for Mexico.
It wasn't easy to get this many airplanes together for
a movie. When Tallmantz Aviation got the contract, They
had to go out and find all these airplanes. They came from
as far away as Long Island, NY. (a 3,000 mile ferry trip).
Others came from Grey Bull, WY., Buckeye, AZ., Houston,
TX., Champaign, IL. and forest fire tanker bases all over
the western U.S. They also had to be made ferryable to get
them to southern California. Finding flyable airplanes was
difficult enough, then came the many little jobs to make
them look the part. This required some engine changes,
replacing hoses and cockpit glass, getting bomb bay doors
to work, finding turrets and guns to go in them, and other
"wartime" fixtures for airplanes 25 years old, a tough
job, but the mechanics at Tallmantz Aviation were up to
it.
On New Years Day, 1969 I was part of the second flight
of B-25's to be flown from Orange County Airport to San
Carlos Bay, Mexico. Many of us had not flown formation
before and forming up over the Pacific Ocean south of
Newport Beach, CA. had its share of trills and excitement.
Getting those "ponderous beauties", as Frank Tallman
called them, to stay 100 feet apart for three and half
hours wasn't easy. From the ground the sight must have
seemed hilarious..from the cockpit, hair-raising. We had
an intermediate stop for customs and immigrations at
Hermosillo, Mexico.
Paramount Studios had cut down all the organ cactus
for a mile around to prepare this shooting location. They
constructed a 6000' X 200' runway, with a perimeter
taxiway and a hard stand for each airplane. It was very
well built..the bad part was that it was surrounded on
three sides by mountains, that meant we always had to land
from the sea and takeoff towards it and no matter which
way the wind blew, it was always a crosswind. All
airplanes arrived without incident.
Paramount also built a "base" at the site with a
hospital, a large brick house, mess hall, control tower,
bomb dump and enough pyramid tents to house the entire
cast and crew. Fortunately we didn't have to live in them,
the local motel was bad enough. The location was detailed
right down to the comm wire running to the squadron
commander's office. You would swear you were somewhere in
the Mediterranean during WW II. My Marine Corps rifleman
days were partially spent in Sicily and Sardinia and this
"base" could easily have been in either of those places
during the war.
After our debriefing we looked up the crews from the
first flight of six airplanes that arrived the day before,
they were suffering the aftermath of drinking too much
Tequila on New Year's Eve in Mexico. Fortunately no one
landed in jail, but in some cases it was close!
The next day we reported out at the "base" for duty.
By act of Paramount, I was commissioned a First
Lieutenant, USAAF, my highest rank in the Corps was
Corporal. We were issued uniforms and leather flying
jackets with the Squadron insignia patch on it: a naked,
long-haired lady riding a diving bomb and holding a spear
in her right hand.
The special effects department did wonders making the
airplanes look war weary. Oil and paint were splashed over
them, nose art sanded to made it look like they had flown
many missions. We did have to change one thing: we had to
clean the windows - no one would go into "combat" with
dirty windows! Most of the airplanes had names; Free, Fast
& Ready, Luscious Lulu, Berlin Express, Dumbo, Denver
Dumper, Booby Trap, Hot Pants, Annzas, Laden Maiden,
Superman, Vestal Virgin, aBOMBinable Snowman and the one I
flew the most, Passionate Paulette.
Each day we had a pilots meeting to brief on the
flying for the day, weather and assign duties for the
non-flyers. Tallmantz had a Cessna 310 that did a mail run
to Los Angels each day with the film shot the day before,
it would pick up the processed film and any high priority
cargo and return to the "base". If we had no duties that
day we would play volleyball, cards or lounge on the
beach, the triangular fins in San Carlos Bay kept us out
of the water.
Our formations were flown stacked up and we used right
echelon, diamond, diamonds in diamond and diamond echelon.
Normally we landed out of a right echelon with the leader
breaking over the numbers and spacing ourselves about
2000' in trail.
One day when I was flying #4, I saw #3 hit the wake of
#2 and go sliding out to the right. #3 corrected back to
the left and hit the wake again, this time sliding to the
left and aimed right at the control tower. He only missed
it by raising his left wing. After we landed we heard what
it was like from the view point of one of our pilots 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 foot prints on my chest..just
like in the cartoons". The pilot speaking was 6'5" and
265lbs.
There were other incidents while filming the movie,
some funny, some almost tragic, and 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 awhile as
they made some setup changes. Seven airplane in trail and
looking for adventure. We found it in the form of a sports
fishing boat. We went by a guy on this boat three times at
about fifteen feet, the first time he was waving, the
second time he shook his fist at us and the third time it
looked like he had a shotgun. On landing the lead airplane
had a rip in his elevator fabric that we assumed came from
the poles that hold the fishing lines out from the boat,
because the first two times we went by in front of him and
the last time we hopped over the top.
Other day the scene called for Frank Tallman to cut a
plastic dummy in half 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
elevator. Frank didn't have any elevator control, but did
his usual fine job of flying and landed safely.
The fatality was the second unit director who was also
the aerial cameraman. I was flying #11 in a twelve ship
formation, three in echelon, echelons in trail at 4000'.
The nose of the camera plane had a specially built glass
insert that allowed unobstructed 180o viewing and this
setup, perfected by Paul Mantz, made Tallmantz Aviation
the leader in aviation photo planes at the time. The twin
tails of the B-25 made another great area for unobstructed
filming if eight inches were removed from the rear
fuselage at the tail gunners position, making a two by
four foot opening to mount a camera in. The cameraman was
using the rear fuselage opening and fell out 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" of manifold pressure, then
releasing brakes at one to two second intervals and go to
max power. This scene was used at the beginning of the
movie. Can you imagine the wake turbulence. We did this
four times, on the first two I was number two and the
turbulence wasn't bad. On the third, we were number nine
and the turbulence was terrible. We found ourselves
drifting left towards the next plane to takeoff, with both
of us on the control we couldn't stop this left drift.
Then we hit the turbulence going the other way and shot to
the right, what a ride. On the fourth one we were number
sixteen and had a runaway propeller right after the gear
came up, it was caused by a prop governor failure. After
landing we found out a B-25 will not taxi on one engine.
You can turn into the dead engine, but with no nose wheel
steering that all you can do. Another area that calls for
special handling on the B-25 is the touchy brakes.
Of the eighteen B-25's in "Catch-22", most were
TB-25Js. These had been through the Hayes Conversion after
WW II which eliminated all the combat equipment on them
and they were used as multi-engine trainers by the USAF.
After being surplus by the Air Force, they went on serving
as Corporate airplanes or Borate Bombers until being
grounded by the US Forestry Service. After the filming was
completed, Paramount asked Tallmantz Aviation to sell the
airplanes for them. The studio owned fourteen, Tallmantz
owned three, and the eighteenth that had so much corrosion
it had to ferried in with the gear down was destroyed for
the movie. The asking price was $6-7,000 each, at the time
price seemed ridiculously high.
Flying the B-25 in 1969 was a big thrill for me and it
still is even with another 19,000 plus hours behind me. It
started my love of warbirds. Since then I have crewed on a
P-51 at the Reno Air Races (Race 2, flown by Bob Love,
owned by Jack Hovey), owned my SNJ-5 for 24 years (it has
the "Catch-22" insignia on it), flown other warbirds and
some heavy iron like the PV-2D, DHC-4, DC-3, DC-4, DC-8, DC-10,
B-727, B-737, B-747, but there's a soft spot in my heart for the
heaviest feeling of them all, the B-25.
Where are they now, the seventeen B-25s that came back
from Mexico are listed in the latest Warbirds World Wide
Directory.
N10V "Berlin Express" is now with the EAA at Oshkosh, WI.
N1042B to Aces High Ltd. North Weald, UK as "Dolly".
N10564 NASM, Washington-Dullas Airport.
N1203 One of the Tallmantz glass nose photo planes crashed
in Columbia.
N2849G Tom Reilly, Kissimmee, FL.
N3174G March AFB CA.
N3507G "Passionate Paulette" Grissom AFB IN.
N3699G changed to N30801 Challenge Publications, Van Nuys,
CA. as "Executive Sweet".
N7681C to the movie "Hannover Street" as "Amazing Andrea"
destroyed in hangar fire, Musee de Air, Le Bourget,
France.
N7687C "Tokyo Express" sold at the Harry Doan auction.
N8195H to Mike Pupich Van Nuys, CA. as "Heavenly Body".
N9115Z to the movie "Hannover Street" now at the RAF
Museum, Hendon, UK.
N9451Z "Dumbo" to Malmstrom AFB MT.
N9452Z to Maxwell AFB AL.
N9456Z Mid-Atlantic Air Museum, Middletown, PA. as
"Briefing Time".
N9494Z "Laden Maiden" to the movie "Hannover Street" as
"Gorgeous George-Ann". To be rebuilt by Visionair.
N9856C with Aero Traders, Chino, CA. as "Pacific
Princess".
Dedicated to those who have "gone west" Frank Tallman,
Frank Pine, Tom Mooney W.G.F.P., Skip March, Bill Reid,
Bill Fritz, and to all the rest who helped make
"Catch-22", for me, a truly memorable aviation event.
_________________
GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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)& a great story. 
