World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe original design for the B-25 Mitchell medium bombers was drafted with Britain and France as the intended customers, but they opted for A-20 Havoc bombers from Douglas Aircraft Company instead. In 1939, the United States Army Air Corps evaluated the design and was satisfied with the prototype aircraft's performance. The original prototype, code named NA-40B, crashed on 11 Apr 1939, but the US Army liked the little they had observed thus far, and decided to order the design into production without further testing. Out of the modified design, now named NA-62, the production B-25 Mitchell bombers were born. Some of the changes with NA-62 include a new wing shape and a larger tail fin. The first B-25 bombers entered service with the US Army in 1940.

ww2dbaseAmong their early missions was the Doolittle Raid in Apr 1942, where United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet steamed close to Japan and launched US Army B-25 Mitchell bombers on an attack on Japanese cities; it was meant to be an attack at the Japanese morale and at the same time a morale booster for the Americans. Headed by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, 16 lightly armed B-25 Mitchell bombers took off at the dawn of 18 Apr 1942 and bombed Tokyo and other cities. Actual damage inflicted was minimal, and 15 out of the 16 were destroyed in crash-landings in China after the mission, but the boost of American morale was significant. The lone B-25 bomber that survived the mission landed in Russia, and the aircraft was confiscated by the Soviets.

ww2dbaseIn the Pacific War, B-25 Mitchell bombers were frequently used at low altitude, acting as ground attack aircraft instead of as medium bombers. These strafing aircraft were first devised in the field by the likes of Major Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn, who initially modified A-20 Havoc bombers but later also submitted requests to perform similar modifications to B-25 bombers by adding guns and eliminating any unnecessary weight and space; as his request was approved by George Kenney, Kenney would also claim design credit, noting that he had further contributed to Gunn's designs. The resulting B-25G aircraft each had additional machine guns and a 75mm M4 cannon, the largest caliber weapon ever equipped in an American bomber. A later variant, B-25J, increased the number of machine guns to 18. Finally, B-25 bombers sometimes served as troop transports in the South Pacific.

ww2dbaseAlthough B-25 bombers were noisy and caused hearing problems for the pilots and crew after the war, they were were well loved by their crew for that they could absorb significant amounts of damage and still maintain manageable flight characteristics.

ww2dbase9,984 were built between 1941 and 1945; 6,608 of them were built at North American's Fairfax Airport plant in Kansas City, Kansas, United States.

B-25 Mitchell Timeline

SPECIFICATIONS

B-25J

Machinery	Two Wright R-2600 radial engines rated at 1,850hp each
Armament	12x12.7mm machine guns, 2,700kg of bombs
Crew	6
Span	20.60 m
Length	16.13 m
Height	4.80 m
Wing Area	57.00 m²
Weight, Empty	9,580 kg
Weight, Loaded	15,200 kg
Weight, Maximum	19,000 kg
Speed, Maximum	442 km/h
Speed, Cruising	370 km/h
Rate of Climb	4.00 m/s
Service Ceiling	7,600 m
Range, Normal	2,170 km

Photographs

Visitor Submitted Comments

Show older comments

1.  Hobilar says:
19 Aug 2007 03:22:42 AM

870 North American B25C or B25D Mitchell were also shipped to the Soviet Union under Land Lease

2.  Bill says:
23 Apr 2011 12:47:39 PM

OJT, OR ON THE JOB TRAINING:

DID YOU KNOW:

Of Doolittles Fifteen pilots on the April 1942 raid against Japan, five won their wings before 1941. And all but one of the Sixteen co-pilots were less then a year out of flight training.
Sixteen North American B-25 Mitchell Bombers,
Eighty Crewmen, Bomb Japan Immortality

UNSUNG HERO:

The idea of a raid against Japan, was on the mind of US Navy Captain Francis Low, thinking
under the right conditions Army Bombers could bomb Japan launched from an aircraft carrier. The raid was later carried out by
Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle

The 1944 film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was
based on the book by Captain Ted W. Lawson
one of the Doolittle raiders.
It was a reasonably accurate depicition of the mission. It is available on VHS and DVD

4.  David Stubblebine says:
20 Apr 2013 06:45:04 PM

Re: Doolittle bomber interred at Vladivostok [B-25B #40-2242]-
The best information available is that this aircraft was scrapped in the USSR in the 1950s.

5.  Bill says:
13 Jul 2015 10:10:38 PM

FILE PHOTO: B-25C

This was the first version of the Mitchell aircraft s/n B-25C-NA, 41-12800. A total of 1,625 the B-25 was named the Mitchell in honor of General Billy Mitchell who fought for a strong air force and independent of the army.

13.  David Stubblebine says:
30 May 2017 05:59:12 PM

Lawrence Roth (above):
This is a difficult puzzle to crack. I found out only a little more than what you have listed. I found one listing that said 6 were killed but little else. I also found in the 487th squadron history that the air echelon departed Battle Creek, Michigan on 18 Feb 1943 and arrived Kabrit, Egypt between 10-29 Mar 1943 with nothing mentioned in between. So it would seem that a crash in French Guiana on 27 Feb 1943 was part of the ferry flight to North Africa. The flight leg from Trinidad to Belem would fit with that. There should have been a Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) filed in this case and I found one source that says MACR 16019 is associated with this crash but I can find no record of this MACR on the internet (except that the report number appears in the National Archives microfilm catalog). There should be more available on this somewhere so keep digging. If you haven’t already, request a copy of his service record (http://ww2db.com/faq/#3).

20.  Alan Chanter says:
7 Nov 2021 01:22:06 AM

The USA shipped 862 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers to the Soviet Union from the spring of 1942. From September 1942 they were mainly employed by the ADD (Aviatsia Dalmego Deistviya) for night interdiction raids against a variety of targets, but as the war progressed, they increasingly joined the lyushin and Petlyakov bomber force in strategic bombing attacks on Warsaw, Breslau, Konigsberg, Tilsit and Berlin.
The Russian pilots liked the handling and range of the B-25D but were less enthusiastic about the lack of a rear defensive armament. In theory, this shouldn’t have presented a problem since the American aircraft had power-operated dorsal and ventral turrets each with a pair of 0.5in Browning M2 machine guns. However, the remote-controlled retractable ventral turret gave constant trouble. Its periscopic sight had a limited field of view and vibrated so badly, when the guns were fired, that it was almost impossible to aim properly.
German fighters quickly learned to exploit this weakness by attacking from astern and below; therefore many Russian B-25Ds were modified to mount a single flexible 12.7mm UBT mass-produced heavy machine gun in the tail to provide some added protection, and from 1944, whe the ADD began receiving the more heavily armed B-25J s which had twin Browning AN/M2s in the tail.
Some 497 Russian Mitchells survived the war and the type remained in service until 1949.