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The North American B-25 Mitchell is an American medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation. [2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II , and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating ...
The B-25 medium bomber was one the most famous airplanes of World War II. It was the type used by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle for the famous Doolittle Raid over Japan on 18 April 1942. The first B-25 test aircraft flew on 19 August 1940, and the first production Mitchell was delivered to the 17th Bombardment Group in February 1941. A total of 9,816 ...
44-30077 Mouthy Mitchell – Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum at the former NAS Ford Island in Honolulu, Hawaii. [130] [131] 44-30243 (unnamed) – Pendelton Air Museum in Pendelton, Oregon. [132] 44-30363 Desert Bloom – Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. The museum also features a partial fuselage display of another B-25. [133]
North American Aviation eventually began to incorporate variations of Gunn's armament innovations into later models of the B-25. These later model aircraft, including the heavily armed B-25G, B-25H, and some Js, with the gun version of the B-25J being equipped with no less than 18 .50-caliber machine guns.
The 75 mm gun, models M2 to M6, was the standard American medium caliber gun fitted to mobile platforms during World War II. They were primarily mounted on tanks, such as the M3 Lee and M4 Sherman, but one variant was also used as an air-to-ground gun on the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber aircraft.
"Package gun" installations on US medium and light bombers, such as the B-25 Mitchell and A-26 Invader, were likely the first pods used by the United States military. One of its primary tasks was to suppress ground defenses during attack runs while conducting maritime interdiction, and the extra armament provided additional firepower.
On July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber of the United States Army Air Forces crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building in New York City while flying in thick fog. The crash killed fourteen people (three crewmen and eleven people in the building), and an estimated twenty-four others were injured.
The B-25 bomber was heavily armed with 75mm and .50 caliber machine guns.. During 1942 and 1943, the lack of a usable escort fighter for the United States Army Air Forces in the European Theatre of Operations led to experiments in dramatically increasing the armament of a standard Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress, and later a single Consolidated B-24D Liberator, to each have 14 to 16 Browning AN ...