Monday, December 01, 2014

Ike's B-25

Air Force Magazine has an interesting article on one of General Eisenhower's personal transport aircraft during WW II (well, interesting if you're an aviation buff, which I am, sorta).  The first few grafs from said article:
As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower needed to be able to travel—quickly—to meet with top alliance leaders and field commanders and get a close-up view of the unfolding war.

Eisenhower had an eclectic collection of aircraft at his disposal for a variety of uses, but only one was specially made for him. It was a heavily converted B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, built and modified by North American Aviation, the same company that produced the B-25s that attacked Japan in 1942 in the famous Doolittle Raid. Eisenhower's B-25—serial No. 43-4030—is poorly documented and deliberately so.

The year it was built, American P-38 pilots in the Pacific executed a daring, long-range mission to shoot down a bomber known to be carrying Japanese Adm. Isoruku Yamamoto, who had planned and carried out the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. His death was a severe blow to Japan's strategic effort and morale. Army censors did not want German pilots to be able to repeat that success by shooting down Eisenhower, and so photography of his aircraft was severely restricted—especially because it had a unique profile.

Although by early 1944, B-25s were rolling off the North American-operated Kansas City plant at a sustained pace of about 300 per month, a VIP version of the Mitchell was a wartime rarity. Serial No. 4030 came to be known as RB-25J(3), denoting that it was a rebuilt airplane and only the third Mitchell to be specially modified.
Note the article sez "wartime rarity," not unique.  General Hap Arnold, chief of staff of the wartime Army Air Forces had one, too.  General Arnold got his personal B-25 before Ike got his, actually.  From another article (link below) on B-25 executive transports:
The second B-25 modified by North American belonged to USAAF General Henry "Hap" Arnold- visiting the Inglewood facility at Mines Field one day, Arnold got to see the Whiskey Express and as the Chief of Staff, he decided he needed one, too. This was 1943 and production was rapidly accelerating in the B-25 program, so it was easy to divert a B-25C from production to be fitted out by North American to a similar standard as Whiskey Express. After the war, General Arnold's personal transport was purchased by Howard Hughes who used for another twenty years before it was retired. 

The same year Arnold got his own B-25, a B-25J was taken off the production line in Kansas City and flown to Inglewood on a "secret" mission. Tail number 43-4030 was fitted out to become the personal transport for General Dwight Eisenhower. Unlike Arnold's B-25 which had olive drab upholstery, Ike's Mitchell had a more stylish blue interior. Clamshell doors were fitted to the nose for easy access to the extra communications and navigation equipment and more floor space in the aft fuselage was created by moving the gunner's aft hatch further back, giving the rear cabin more seating and a drop leaf table. Overhead luggage racks were also fitted and extra fuel tanks were fitted to the bomb bay to give it more range. Officially it was designated an RB-25J to hide its true nature as Ike's personal transport, but as the war in Europe progressed, it was redesignated CB-25J and when Eisenhower moved up to larger aircraft as the Supreme Allied Commander, the CB-25J was passed on for use by lower ranking generals and was used by the USAF postwar until it ended up in the possession of the South Dakota Air and Space Museum where it can be seen today. 
Most interesting.  While the Air Force Magazine article is a good read, the second article ("The First B-25 Mitchell Executive Transport") is much more comprehensive and detailed.

8 comments:

  1. You've probably flown in a C-47, or the type, and they were just really uncomfortable. My theory was, they had too much wing. They would bounce all over the sky, and just beat you to death. A 4 hour flight seemed like 40. The B-25 on the other hand, whoosh, that baby was designed for speed. You could also drop down to 6 foot off the waves, unlike a C-47 which would probably rip the stabilizer off as the pilot tried to counter the planes tendency to bounce all over. Nice plane General!

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    1. You've probably flown in a C-47, or the type...

      Yup, many times... the last time bein' around 1965 in a USAF C-47. My maintenance OIC at the time was rated and he used to take up the Gooney Bird assigned to Vandenberg as a liaison aircraft every so often to "maintain his proficiency," read as: his flight pay. He'd take along as many of the troops as wanted to go and could fit in the plane. As a child I flew on DC-3s operated by several airlines, wich were MUCH more comfortable than that C-47.

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  2. "...use by lower-ranking generals."

    Most people know that Air Force 1 is the designation of Presidential plane and Air Force 2 that of the VP, but did you know that there is an "Air Force 3?" That is the designation given to a similarly-equipped aircraft for the use of members of the JCS or the Heads of the major commands. From this I'll relate a funny story. At the time I was stationed in the UK my 1st cousin, then a Brig General, was the Deputy Commander for Ops, (DCO) HQ USAF in a 2-star slot. As such he was technically the # 3 guy in the Air Force (working directly under the CinC and ViceCinC USAF (despite the presence of many 4-star generals in the major commands. From all this I have a story:

    One night I returned fairly late to the O'club @ RAF Woodbridge after drinking at a local pub: "Jesus Christ, Virgil" they said, "call the command post IMMEDIATELY, the Wing Commander has been rising hell trying to find you!" Turns out the Wing CP had gotten a call from "Air Force 3" en route requesting that I be located to that the DCO, HQ, USAF (my cousin) could have dinner with me. LOL! Of course they didn't know that he was my cousin, and that he was on his way to a USAFE conference in Wiesbaden, so they--including the Wing CO--were jumping thru their a-holes trying to locate this Jr Capt that must have SOME KIND OF PULL! With failure to do so perhaps seeing certain careers sink before their very eyes. The situation was saved only by the wx which caused AF # to divert to RAF Mildenhall, from whence Maurice was driven down to Bentwaters by staff car. There were some puckered you-know-whats for a while on that dealieo, lol!

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    1. Helluva story, Virgil. I might promote this to the main page.

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  3. Better clean up the typos, tho. :) AF "3" viz "AF#" & "so" that vix "to that"

    I also left out what really is the kicker. You see, I (and another guy in my squadron) were on the Wing Commander's sh$$t list. He wanted to jerk our wings for some, um, "unauthorized" tangling with some RAF electric P1 Lightnings in mock air-air cmbt. Now, I didn't ask for my cousin come to come to my aid--I didn't even know he was coming and he knew nothing about my travails, but everyone on the base assumed that was what he was there for--especially when the Wing Commander showed up at the O-Club in dress blues to greet the General. As one 2nd Lt in the 92nd TFS (who knew of my situation) assigned to the command post said later: "I thought Virgil was in really deep serious, but after we got that call from Air Force 3 I realized he didn't have any troubles at all." LOL!

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  4. PPS: What was REALLY interesting was the "repartee" between the Wing Commander (O-6) and my Cousin (O-7) and myself at the O-Club bar before my cousin and I went to dinner. The Wing Co trying to suss out how much the General knew of his attempts to ground me, and my cousins realization that there was a "disturbance in the force" but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. A very stilted "polite" conversation all round..

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    1. So... did yer cousin ever figger it out?

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  5. Oh, I told him over dinner, Buck. But I also knew he was too much of a good officer to intervene on my behalf and I didn't want to embarrass hm by asking him to put himself in that position, so I ask him not to (just to make myself look good, lol I knew he didn't have to--his mere presence would have the desired effect--and it did, his trip and visit being an accidental stroke of good fortune, lol)

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.