EAW high resolution North American B-25D Mitchell medium bomber - flyable strafer version for the P38J slot.

Working at the USAAF maintenance depot in Australia in 1942, Capt. "Pappy Gunn" conducted a number of experiments with B-25's and A-20's to get more firepower and destructive capability from the types. His most successful project was to convert medium level bombers into ground attack aircraft by packing the nose full of .50 Caliber machine guns and painting over the glazed nose panels. All the medium bomb squadrons in the SW Pacific, whose ground crews did all the conversion work in the field, rapidly adopted the idea. It became common Practice to completely cover the nose with a painting of the head of the squadron "mascot" which quickly became standardized as squadron markings. There were falcons, bats, tigers, black panthers, dragons etc.

'Lil Shifless - B-25D-1 serial number 41-30669 - was from the 499th Bomb Squadron "Bats Outa Hell", of the 345th Bomb Group. She was transferred to the 499th on December 26, 1943 and assigned to 1st Lt. Octave J. Daniel. Daniel had written off his previous B25, Shifless Skonk, in a crash landing on December 22. His next B25 thus received the name 'Lil Shifless, which was painted on the starboard side only. The white radio-compass housing was painted white as a flight designator, and the bat face was painted on. 

At the time depicted in this skin - May 1944 -, 'Lil Shifless had flown 60 missions. It carried the bomb markings plus a victory flag for a Jap Val dive bomber shot down and a second flag with a ? mark for a probable, 2 sinking ship profiles and a fried egg emblem to commemorate a memorable steak and eggs "fat cat" mission to Australia. She survived all her missions and was transferred out to Service Command as "war weary" on December 2, 1944.

The regular 'Lil Shifless crew members were:

Pilot - Octave J. Daniel
Copilot - 2nd Lt. Russel N. Erum
Flight engineer - S/Sgt. Dean W. Butler
Top turret gunner - S/Sgt. Edward J. Cooley
Radioman / gunner - T/Sgt. James E. Griffin
Ground Crew Chief - T/Sgt. Donald E. Thomas

New 3DZ model by Captain Kurt
Skin by DeanH 

To load into your game, drop all files into your EAW folder. Use the included Flt. file to have the flight profile of the plane. Do not use with ECAPanel, because if you open this .exe, it will overwrite the Flt. file with the P38J flight model.

If you want decode the .tpc files into the original .pcx graphics files, simply click on the tpc-pcx exe file included in the folder.

We hope you like her.

Cheers 

Captain Kurt
October 7, 2005