When I lived in Columbia, SC, back in 1990 to 93 I met a Mopar guy who was retired from the FBI, but during WW2 he had served as a gunner on a B-25 in the Pacific. My father was mostly in B-24s but also spent some time in B-25s in the Pacific (he was a crew chief) so I was interested in hearing his stories. He told me he flew on a privateer. I had never heard of privateers before so he explained that the US Army Air Corps had a fleet of B-25s outfitted with guns in the nose and on pods on either side below the cockpit that were all controlled by the pilot. The purpose of these planes was to sweep the ocean in advance of the formations of heavy bombers headed toward Japan. Apparently the Japanese fishing fleet was serving as an early warning picket line so the B-25s were tasked with sinking everything in the path of the heavy bombers so the Japanese would not have advance warning of what was coming. These aircraft sank everything afloat, from fishing boats to Japanese war ships, and they were very, very effective. In 1993 I moved to Winston-Salem and each year a B-25 privateer named Panchito (after the pistol-packing parrot in Disney's The Three Amigos) came to the annual air show (along with Chuck Yeager and his wingman, Bud Anderson, who lived in Winston-Salem). By then I understood what I was looking at and it was chilling to see the 8 .50 guns all pointing forward and realize what they had been used for. This B-25 looks like it is also outfitted as a privateer, but with the invasion stripes on the wings it looks like it is from the European Theater rather than the Pacific.
Can you tell I was raised in the military?
