Steve Nelson wrote:
The Kalamazoo Air Zoo's B-25 was also originally built as an H. She was retrofitted with a glass nose at some point, which was later "sheet metalled" over when she was turned into an exec aircraft. The Air Zoo restored her as a gun-nose J. I understand they would have liked to return her to H configuration, but couldn't find an H nose.
SN
Ahh 43-4899 N37L I met this B-25H in 1975, I drove down to the McKinnon Airport to see the Mitchell after receiving a photograph of the plane from my friend William R. Lyons.
As I stopped in front of the hangar, the B-25 was parked parallel to the back wall of the hangar.
At this time, my recourses for researching serial numbers and civil registration numbers was relegated to a couple of books on the B-25, a list of the Catch 22 Air Force compiled by Bill Larkins, the FSS in Savannah, and the postal service.
The B-25 in front of me had no civil registration number stenciled on her fuselage. I saw that someone was standing on the ladder of the rear hatch.
I walked up beside the legs and asked the legs what model B-25 this was.
Without hesitation a voice came from within the B-25 "It's a Q model".
nothing followed.
I immediately replied "That’s a load of crap, they built the B-25, the B-25A-B-C-D-G-H two different versions of the J, and they had a few experimental Charlie models to test stuff North American was working on and an experimental H equipped with Pratts that crashed, roughly 9,816 examples of the Mitchell but no Q models.
This was my first meeting with Doug Brown as he climbed out of the tail and looked at me and said, "Her serial number is 43-4899".
"Ah, an H model. (then) one of five known examples of the H model (N103 hadn't yet crashed, there was a rumor of an H model in China - never confirmed, and N96GC had crashed and burned the previous month in June" I replied.
He showed me around the B-25, and gave me the run of the plane; I was too broke to afford a descent camera, so I never got a picture of the cockpit which was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
The cockpit photo I have of N10V in the 50s is a close.
She was missing the starboard engine.
Mr. Brown said that he fired her up after the sheriff's auction and the engine threw a rod off the valve, through the valve cap, through the cowling into the dirt.
As Steve said, she was once in VIP configuration, with an AirStair Door on the Port side.
The Bombay was bolted closed, and there was a floorboard placed under a couch under the Spars.
Windows were placed just above the hinge point of the Bombay so when one sat on the couch, one could see the beautiful country side.
She had a galley kitchen, captain’s chairs at the blister windows, and a honey bucket in a small bathroom behind a small door toward the tail.
Mr. Brown pointed out all of the Grimes Lighting on her, and then the nose.
Mr. Brown called it a "Bendix Nose" and it did not appear to be a standard J nose skinned over and didn't look like it either.
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