@ New Orleans, LA
September 2024
This B-25J Mitchell, displayed at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, wears marking of the Burma Bridge Busters (490th Bombardment Squadron). The B-25J2 variant had the strafer nose, containing eight .50 machine guns, along with two guns in side blisters on each side of the cockpit. Adding in the firepower of the newly relocated top turret, the B-25J could bring 14 machine guns to bear on the anti-aircraft defenses during a bombing run on a bridge. First flown in 1940, more than 9,800 were built. The B-25J was the last factory series production of the B-25. (Number made: 4,318.) There are more than one hundred surviving B-25s scattered over the world, mainly in the United States with about 45 still airworthy.
