Warbird Information Exchange

http://usaircraft.proboards.com/index.c ... hread=3500


These photographs of B-25B 40-2291, which crashed while practicing for the Doolittle Raid, have been uncovered after 70 years.
As far as I can tell, they never have been published anywhere before.

TonyM.

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"Welcome back Mr. Lasky."

Incredible that these are now available for us to see. Thanks for sharing!

Unlike the first post, this is a mishap directly resulting from "on the edge" training. Those guys are to be admired for taking a problem, devising a solution, testing their theory, and flying successfully into the history books, even though there was risk along the way.

I didn't see the enlarged photos - can you tell if the broomstick guns were installed yet? Also, given the number of crewmembers who trained, but remained behind on the Hornet, has anyone ever read about these folks? This is the first time I've ever seen any names beyond the 80 Raiders. Unlike other tall tales commonly told like "I was an ace" or "I flew the U-2", you don't hear much like "I trained to be a Doolittle Raider" ... even from people for whom that would be the truth.

Ken

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

Believe it or not Ken, there's a number of false Doolittle Raider claimants, and a list of known project members who were there but did not go on the mission.

Here's a list of other guys involved. We know who they were from the 17th BG orders for them to transfer to the project, and also from the list of the guys on board the Hornet.

http://doolittleraid.com/support.htm

Ryan

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Aerial Photographer with Red Wing Aerial Photography currently based at KRBD and tailwheel CFI.
Websites: Texas Tailwheel Flight Training, DoolittleRaid.com and Lbirds.com.

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. - Prov. 21:31 - Train, Practice, Trust.

Ken,

The broomstick machine guns in the tail can clearly be seen in the 10 March Photos posted on Nathan's site (first photo in the thread).

Also, if I remember correctly, the 10 March mishap followed a low-level, long-range over-water flight in preparation for the mission.


http://usaircraft.proboards.com/index.c ... hread=3482

TonyM.

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"Welcome back Mr. Lasky."

I have no doubt, Tony, that you are correct. My earlier comment regarded a poster who said (paraphrased) that he knew that they trained "on the edge" but didn't realize that such training actually caused accidents. My point was that, regardless of how "on the edge" the Joyce mission that day may have been, he most likely executed a normal landing at Ellington, suffered a shimmy damper failure and collapsed his nose gear ... damaging, but hardly the result of aggressive training ... that could have happened upon landing from a vanilla sight-seeing flight. The Crack Up #2, stall on takeoff, can most definitely be contributed to "training on the edge" ... and that's exactly what they were doing to cause the wreck.

Sorry if it seems like splitting hairs, I just felt as if the first comment sensationalized an accident simply because it occurred to a Doolittle crew during their training time.

Ken

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

No problem Ken. Thanks for the feed back.

You're right, the shimmy dampner would have failed eventually--it just happened to fail after the practice mission.

The second mishap is very intersting from the history point of view. Stall at 20 feet agl. No one hurt. Plane broken. Must have been quite a ride, albeit a short one.

Thanks to all for the comments.

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"Welcome back Mr. Lasky."