[ARC5] Another Nav Story from the Med

[Robert Eleazer]

In the Med in WWII they received some B-25G's that were equipped with a 75MM cannon.  The cannon was fired by the pilot but manually loaded.  Since that version of the B-25 had no Nav/Bomb position, the Navigator position was relocated to behind the pilots, which is where the 75MM gun breech was located.  Since the Navigator supposedly did not have much to do they also put him in charge of loading the gun (the most useless things in the USAAF were said to be the altitude above you, the runway behind you, the gas still down in the fuel truck on the ground and a Navigator).

On the first missions using the 75MM gun they quickly found that it did not fire fast enough to be able to hit much of anything.  Following one mission in which they fired away at a target without effect, the pilot having worked the poor Nav nearly to death loading the gun as fast as he could, the highly irritated pilot decided to give up and asked the Nav for a course for home.

The exhausted Navigator, stripped to the waist, sweating profusely in the low altitude Med heat, replied, "Fly West Pilot, fly West."

The pilot replied that "Fly West" was not a proper response and demanded a specific course.  The Nav went back to his plotting table, consulted his maps and replied, "Don't fly West, Pilot.  Fly 270 degrees."

I think the later B-25H model introduced a 75MM gun with automatic loading.  They pretty much still could not hit anything with it, but I'll bet they got lost less often.

Wayne