The B-25:
I know next to nothing about the B-25 (Mitchell) bomber. Twin engine, twin rudder, medium range bomber of WWII vintage. Maybe it was an air show, maybe it was just some kind of good old boy fly-in, but as I was strolling along, downtown, I’d just finished chatting up a client, I still had the ear buds in place, but now music was playing, and there was that familiar rumble. Piston motor. Piston and pushrod, think: sounds like an old (vintage) V-8. I glanced up. Hence the name for the side project’s side-kick.
The old plane was down on the deck, cruising along at maybe a hundred or so knots. For part of the lazy 8 figure it described, there was an accompaniment of, looked like, T-36 Texan trainers. No idea what they really were. The effect was fighter-pilot escort service.
It was my imagination. I thought, at first, from the silhouette and first glance, I was sure I could see through the waist gunner’s window. A little patch of blue sky visible through body of the aircraft. Would’ve meant the “back windows” were open, like driving along at 140 mph with the back windows down, in a, like, four-door.
All I had was a cell phone. Images really wouldn’t turn out. I know the limits of the hardware.
The single B-25 made me think about B-24 (United States Army Air Corp.) The real workhorse of the bomber class, back when it was all piston-powered.
But the limits of hardware?
I’ve got two images that spring to mind, both with that title. Limited only by what the cell phone camera could do.
I watched that B-25 lumber along through the sky, almost wishing for a good, long-range lens with a decent camera attached to it. However, the last camera just got dropped, and the impact with the concrete floor didn’t do the camera lens any good. Which is why I don’t favor expensive gear.
Besides, B-24 would be cool to get a picture of the sky through the waist gunner portals, the big windows in the back of the plane. Perfect image, straight from the side, as the plane would bank over in gentle turn.
I meandered in a homeward direction and the vintage bomber circled downtown again. I’ve had a strange fascination with that very vintage of aircraft. Weird. One summer, as a child, at high noon, the B-17 Bomber TV series would come on, and I watched, eschewing other forms of entertainment. I recall nothing about it, not now. I’ve been in a real B-17. Once. A lot smaller than it I thought it was. Didn’t feel much larger than a Cessna, and that B-17, in real life, certainly felt smaller than a corporate jet. Biggest little plane I’ve seen.
I ran into a neighbor. Asked about the B-25. Talked about seeing the B-17, crawling through one.
“You know, the B-17 would only hold 17,000 pounds of arms.”
(?)
“Yeah, you know, same as an F-4.”
I’ve yet to uncover the root source of my fascination with piston-powered aircraft. Must be a past life or something.
Those older aircraft, that’s before there was any kind of pneumatic assistance, the rudder, rudders, control surfaces, even the landing gear? All cranked up and down, in and out, by hand. Man-handled.
Limits of hardware:
I found out what the absolute upward limit of the site’s capacity on its vaunted “unlimited” arrangement: 250 megabytes or 3,000 e-mail messages. Considering I had it set for 30-day cycle? That’s a hundred messages per day. Just an average.
The e-mail has overfilled twice in the last six weeks. Time to adjust its parameters. Don’t hear from me in a week? It’s gone.
