North American B-25 Mitchell
The B-25 Mitchell was a twin-engine medium bomber built by North American Aviation and named for General William "Billy" Mitchell, the air-power advocate. Ordered into production before a prototype had been tested, it served with the U.S. Army Air Forces, the U.S. Navy and five Allied nations in the Second World War, and won fame when sixteen Mitchells bombed Japan from the carrier Hornet in April 1942. North American built 9,817 before production ended in 1945. The last U.S. Air Force Mitchell retired in 1959, and restored examples still fly.
Why It Mattered
In the Second World War, the U.S. Army Air Forces relied on the B-25 Mitchell as the mainstay of its medium bomber campaigns. The U.S. Army Air Forces, the U.S. Navy and five Allied nations operated the Mitchell during the war, and Allied air forces used it in all theatres of the conflict. North American Aviation built 9,817 Mitchells before production ended in 1945. Its name honoured General William "Billy" Mitchell, the air-power advocate the Army had court-martialled in 1925 for pressing his views in public. One operation made it famous: on 18 April 1942 sixteen Mitchells launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet to attack the Japanese home islands. But the Mitchell mattered beyond a single raid: it was a successful bomber and ground-attack aircraft that flew on every major front.
Design Notes
The B-25 drew heavily on North American's earlier NA-40, keeping its general layout and engine type, but the wing was lowered to the middle of the fuselage and the two pilots sat side by side. The result was a twin-engine bomber with a gull wing at mid-fuselage, twin vertical fins and rudders, and tricycle landing gear, powered by two Wright R-2600 radial engines of 1,700 horsepower each. The twin tails kept the aircraft controllable if an engine quit, a frequent combat event, and duplicated a critical flight control in case enemy fire disabled one fin. Wartime urgency shaped the programme: the Air Corps directed North American to produce the B-25 on calculated performance alone, without first testing a pre-production prototype, and 130 Mitchells had reached front-line squadrons before Pearl Harbor. Armament grew steadily, and aircraft fitted for strafing could carry as many as 18 heavy .50-calibre machine guns, or a 75 mm cannon with up to 14 machine guns.
Operational History
Deliveries stayed focused on the Pacific, but the Mitchell also flew combat missions over Europe and the Mediterranean. By the end of the war it had served with eight numbered U.S. air forces — the 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th — and the U.S. Navy flew more than 700 Mitchells under the designation PBJ. Its most famous operation came on 18 April 1942, when sixteen B-25Bs from the first operational Mitchell unit, the 17th Bombardment Group, launched from the carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo, Kobe and Nagoya. The raid inflicted minimal damage, but it was a heavy blow to Japanese morale, and American morale soared for the first time since Pearl Harbor. It cost the raiders dearly: fifteen Mitchells ran out of fuel and crashed, one diverted to a safe landing at Vladivostok, three men died and eight were captured by the Japanese. Under Lend-Lease the United States delivered 910 Mitchells to Great Britain and 870 to the Soviet Union, and the Dutch operated more than 300 of their own. Crews proved in combat that the B-25 was easy to fly and maintain, and production ran through a succession of variants to the final model, the B-25J.
Afterlife
The Mitchell stayed in U.S. Air Force service after the war; the last operational B-25 was retired from the inventory in January 1959. In 1953 and 1954 the Hayes Aircraft Company modified 380 B-25Js for advanced pilot training, removing their armament and armour, and the Air Force redesignated the conversions TB-25N. Other air forces kept the type in secondary roles for longer: Canada's air force used bombing and training Mitchells well into the 1960s, and many countries received B-25s through postwar foreign-aid programmes. Civilian surplus aircraft found work as fire bombers, but in July 1960 four B-25s crashed while dropping borate on forest fires, two crewmen dying in each crash; the U.S. Forest Service banned the type from fire bombing, and the work never resumed. Hollywood then gave the Mitchell an unexpected second life: eighteen aircraft were refurbished to airworthy condition for the film Catch-22, released in June 1970, and the production profoundly influenced how many B-25s survive. Mitchells still fly: Planes of Fame Air Museum lists its B-25J as flyable, and the aircraft works as a camera platform for filmmakers and as an air show performer.