[ARC5] Another Nav Story from the Med

[Dennis Monticelli]

Robert,

That 75mm in the nose was a worthy experiment that didn't work well in
practice because of the reasons you stated.  The crew didn't like it and
wished for a nose full of 50's instead.  One story I read was of a B-25
that made a pass at a small German frigate in the ET and scored a bulls eye
that set the ship to sinking.  The astonished pilot broke the stunned
silence by saying to the loader and co-pilot: "Nothing happened here.  I
won't say anything if you don't."

Dennis AE6C

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:14 AM, Robert Eleazer <releazer at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
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