

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.


Hell's Fire - B-25D-1 serial number 41-30278 - was a replacement aircraft assigned to the 500th Bomb Squadron, 345th Bomb Group on November 29th, 1943. It had previously served with the 3rd Bomb Group and brought its shark's mouth marking with it from that previous service. The pilot assigned to the aircraft was 1st Lt Joseph A. Gautreau, who had the name Hell's Fire painted on when he got the plane. The skin represents the plane as it appeared in May, 1944. Hell's Fire was lost on September 2, 1944, after being attacked by a Japanese fighter. At the time it was being piloted by 2nd Lt. Allan W. Lay instead of Lt. Gauteau.

Note: This plane is sometimes shown in profiles and models as having a black nose with polka dots. That is totally inaccurate. I have a photo of the plane and it is definitely an olive drab nose with the mouth painted on. The profile artist must have been having an out of body experience because his version is pure fantasy.


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 te .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 2, 2005


