So, here’s a long story about my dad, the Navy, World War II and the turret drive motor assembly from a B-25 Mitchell bomber. Some of you might remember my dad’s story of riding his Harley and his many adventures. Here’s another one of his stories.
As you might remember my dad passed away this last August. He and my mom had moved to an assisted living apartment this last February so we began the task of clearing out their house to get it ready to sell. My dad was a ham radio operator since the late 30s and always had a tower with a beam antenna on it. He turned the antenna with a device at the bottom of the tower that he always told me was a turret drive motor from some sort of WWII bomber. Well, this tower and device were still in the yard and had to come down. After getting the tower down and working my *$$ off, I finally got the drive unit removed too. He had it attached to an 8” pipe buried about four feet in the ground.
So, what do you do with a thing that might be from a 65 year old airplane? Couldn’t just toss it so I did some investigating to see just what it was. Here’s what I found. I contacted the Commerative Air Force, formerly the Confederate Air Force, to see if they could help since they restore and maintain many WWII aircraft. After lots of emails and phone calls I found that in fact what I have is the motor drive assembly from the Navy’s version of the B-25 Mitchell bomber which is called a PBJ. Makes since, my dad was in the Navy during the war and was stationed at Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle Washington. Now I know where he got it.
So continuing this long story, the Southern California wing of the CAF is restoring the last known PBJ in existence located in Camarillo CA. After talking with those fine folks I found they are many years into the restoration and do not have the turret drive assembly necessary to make the turret on their PBJ operational. You might have seen a History Channel episode called “Inside The B-25 Bomber” aired in 2006. They visited the PBJ project telling the restoration story as well as other B-25 information. So the last part of this story is that Lou and I are loading up our CVO and the turret drive in our trailer and heading out to southern California in January to donate this piece of aviation history. Looking forward to seeing the PBJ and doing some coastal riding. Kind of ironic, this drive unit is making it’s way back to the west coast after being gone for over 60 years.
I’ll post a few pics that help tell the story. Also, here is a link to the PBJ’s restoration.
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/caf-socal/_pgg8.php3Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Greg and Lou
Author
Topic: What do you do with a turret drive from a B-25 bomber (Read 6105 times)