A couple of fellows at James Connally Air Force Base
in Texas will not forget their experiences in B-25's.
They especially remember near tragic difficulties in crawling
over the bomb bay. It was a tight fit and could have been
disastrous. Here's why.
A sheet metal deck over the bomb bay served as a bridge for crawling from the aft to front crew compartments. The space was tight, between that deck and the upper skin of the airplane. A fat man could barely negotiate the passage.
Some people crawled head-first through the tunnel, but most preferred to go feet-first so that they would arrive at the other end able to stand upon exiting. But, going feet-first didn't give you much visibility along the way. That proved to be a real problem for one fellow.
An important feature about that crawlway deck, that I haven't mentioned yet, was a removeable circular hatch. It was an access portal into the bomb bay. Normally the hatch was kept closed, but someone forgot it one day.
That was the day that my friend happened to make his feetfirst trip forward, on his stomach through the crawlway. You guessed it. The hatch was open and down into the bomb bay my friend went. He was not wearing a parachute, because it would not allow him to fit in that space between the deck and the upper skin of the plane.
There he stood, atop the bomb bay doors, barely enough room overhead to straighten up. All that stood between him and dropping into the air below, like a human bomb, was the strength of the door latches. Without his parachute he wouldn't stand a chance if the doors opened.
My friend yelled for help, but over the roar of the engines no one heard him for several minutes. Finally, someone noticed that he was missing. The crew chief crawled aft, head-first, from the forward cockpit to see what was the matter.
What he saw appeared both comical and potentially tragic. Quickly, he reached for a harness and chest-pack parachute. He yelled at the fellow down in the bomb bay, handed him the parachute, and told him to quickly put it on. And he added, "Put your feet on the hinges. Stand astride the doors without putting your weight on the doors themselves."
Then they realized the full implications of the dilemma. The man in the bomb bay could not climb up and out of there with his parachute on. There wasn't enough clearance. But, if he didn't wear a chute, he risked having no protection at all if the doors opened.
The crew chief went forward again, to look for something to use as a rope or safety line. He couldn't find anything. He told the pilots of the problem and they reported that the airfield was just a few minutes away. So the crew chief again crawled toward the open hatch and grabbed the parachute harness of the frightened man.
All the way to a very smooth landing, the crew chief lay in the tunnel, holding tight to the fellow down below. Fortunately, the doors never opened and all ended happily.
Some fellows wore their parachute harnesses, without attached chest packs, while crawling through the tunnel. Many made the trip on their backs. Others crawled on their stomachs.
On another flight and another day, a trip through that tunnel became a gripping experience for a portly navigator heading aft. He had barely gotten into the tunnel, moving on his stomach, with both hands stretched out in front, to pull himself along, when he got stuck. The attachment clips for the parachute caught on some electrical wiring from a deck-mounted box to one side. He could not move, forward or back. And he could not get his hands in position to reach the harness clips, nor could he unbuckle his harness and wriggle out of it.
When others realized his predicament, they tried to reach around him to unsnap the clips. Luckily, the hatch to the bomb bay was securely in place. There just wasn't room enough around his rotund body to reach the snaps and free him. Cutting the electrical wires was out of the question.
He had to stay there until the plane landed, electrical power was turned off, and it was safe to cut the wiring. Maybe it was that experience that motivated the fellow to lose a few pounds.
This writer's flights in the B-25 bring back many memories. Memories of getting horribly airsick while riding in the tail gunner's seat, of freezing in the crew compartment just aft of the bomb bay, and the ringing in my ears from the din of those noisy engines. I was in about the last class to train on the Norden bombsight in B-25's and to use the Q-13 radar system mounted in the waist station.
While pilots have told me how much they loved flying that old bird, some of us remember it differently. It was noisy, cold, smelly and cramped. Crawling from the aft to the forward cockpit areas was a chore, and getting up into the nose and the bombsight was a pain.
On hot summer days, with low level turbulence bouncing you around, the tail gunner's position was miserable too. It was the place almost guaranteed to get one airsick. The plane was notorious for fish-tailing and that rear crew station could be awfully uncomfortable.