The Girl from Corsica

A ghost waited for me.

As I walked towards it, the rain dripped off the brim of my Military Police ballcap. I glanced up at the sky. It was gray clouds from horizon to horizon, and despite being the first week in June, it was cold. The weather would have been perfect if this had been England and 1944.

But this was Colorado and it’s 2023.

And the ghost I was walking towards wasn’t the shade of a dead person, but a living, gleaming metallic bird of prey from another age.

The Commemorative Air Force was in town, and I’d looked forward to this visit for months.

I stopped to pay my admission to get in, but a man I’d learn was the pilot of this machine said, “Go right on in. It’s a terrible day and we’re not charging today to see our Girl.”

I thanked the man and walked out to see the “Girl” up close.

“Wow,” my son-in-law, Gary said.

My grandson, who is much younger and maybe a little less controlled, whistled like a guy would at a pretty girl.

The airplane sat there, it’s metal gleaming in the rain. It’s colors shone brightly.

She was beautiful.

“This is a B-25 Mitchell,’ I said. “Airplanes not so different from this one are what carried Doolittle and his boys to bomb Tokyo.”

I’d seen the aircraft flying around several days before, but it was always high up. I remember looking to see it scudding through the clouds, it’s engines a deep base that echoed through the heavens. But it was also a lonesome cry. Once, the Mitchell had flown in formations of dozens. Now, there’s only a handful left.

As I approached the plane, I held my hand up and let my fingers trace over the underside of the wing. I wondered how many thousands of miles of air had slipped under those wings and where all this plane had been.

As I came around the back, a man in a tan flight uniform greeted me and asked if I wanted to go aboard. Are you kidding I thought, but asked, “What model number is this B-25?”

“It’s an H made to look like an N,” he answered.

I climbed into the tail section through a hatch that was barely big enough for me to squeeze through. Two .50 caliber machine guns crowded me for what little space there was in the fuselage. Racks, that in another time and place would have held ammunition sat empty. Clearly, this aircraft was never meant to fly with someone as large as me in it for any length of time.

A man looked up through the open hatch and he and I chatted for a while. He’d flown aboard the plane several times and was supposed to fly again today (you could buy a flight). But the weather had grounded the flight. He’d flown several times and said that the first time he did he was with another guy. Before the engines started, they’d noticed the ear protection provided. It was more than a suggestion. He said that unlike the B-17, you’re sitting almost on top of the engines in the B-25. They put on the ear protection and when the engines started, they were still deafening.

I climbed out and went around front. I got to study the nose art, something that is a dying if not a dead art in the United States Air Force. In this case it proclaimed the name of the aircraft as “Maid in the Shade.” The maid in question was a leggy redhead who looked to be second cousin to Daisy Duke. She was lying on her side with the island of Corsica behind her. A Lat-Long was also included in the painting.

“What’s those bombs for?” Gary asked. “Is that how many it carries.”

“No,” I answered. “That’s how many missions it’s flown.”

We got some pictures and then I went inside. The forward compartment, separated from the rear by the bomb bay was almost as cramped as the back. If the pilot and co-pilot were any closer, they’d be sitting in one another’s lap. I peered up through the upper turret. I didn’t have a clue how the gunner got up there.

One of the more interesting pieces of the ship was its identifier. It belonged to the 319th Bomb Group. There were B-25s stationed out of Corsica. The island, located not far from France and Italy, served as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. With their long range, and that they were loaded to the teeth with guns and bombs, the bombers were very effective in northern Italy. They devastated German convoys, trains, and shipping that were carrying supplies and munitions to German troops who were fighting against the allied invasion of that nation in WW II.

I walked around the aircraft, admiring its lines. After several minutes, I climbed out and went back to the open bomb bay. A woman who I learned was the crew chief was telling others about the plane. Three large bombs hung in the open bomb bay, but what was the most interesting part was the signatures scrawled on the insides of the open bomb bay doors.

The names were written in black marker and some of them jumped out at me from the history books to become living, breathing men and women.

There was the signature of David Thatcher, gunner and engineer on the Ruptured Duck; a B-25 that was part of the Doolittle raid. Over here, the man who was Doolittles co-pilot on the raid, Richard Cole. I wondered what each man was thinking when they signed the bomber doors. Was Thatcher remembering the crash of the Ruptured Duck, the rain, and then being found my Chinese fisherman, and not knowing if they were friends or foe. Was Cole remembering the heart pounding lift off from the U.S.S. Hornet or racing across Japan towards China?

But one of the most interesting signatures belonged to someone who wasn’t in the history books. The signature was that of Betty Neil Hoyes and she identified herself as “A Rosie the Riveter” In Kansas City from 1942-1944. She was one of thousands of women, who during the war, traded their aprons and oven mitts for coveralls and work gloves. While the men were off fighting the battles, they went into the factories and turned out everything from uniforms to bullets to planes and warships. In doing so, they not only helped win the war, but changed our society forever. In the aircraft factories in Kansas City, thousands of B-25s were built. I wonder if Betty looked at this old plane, ran her hands over it, and remembered helping to put it and many like it together.

The crew chief pointed out another signature. “That was my father. He flew this plane and now I work aboard it,” she said. Somehow, it seemed right. She was carrying on a legacy.

But soon we had to leave. I encountered one of the pilots, shook his hand, and commented that it must suck to have his job. I’d have loved to taken the “Girl” for a dance across the sky.

As I left, I took one last lingering look at the old warbird. When the war was over, some were used for research purposes. Others found homes in museums or parked on the corner at some Air Force base. A few found a new life doing something else.

Some were found in movies. Movies like Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (based on the book by the same name) and Catch 22 (also from the book) featured the B-25. It’s shown up in television movies to include the excellent Sole Survivor with William Shatner and Richard Basehart.

But many ended up in the deserts of Arizona where they sat. Eventually, they were taken apart. Their wings were removed, the nose art shredded away, and the places men and lived and died, gone. To paraphrase the Bible, the swords were turned into mobile homes, screen doors, and washing machines.

But not all the planes are accounted for. A number of them never made it to a museum or a scrap yard. Some, like the B-25 flown by author Joy kidney’s uncle in WW II remain missing in the expanse of the Pacific, having vanished along with its crew. To this day, no one knows what happened to the that plane and crew or where their remains might be found.

As I looked at the old plane, I realized it was a monument. It was monument to the living and the dead who defended this nation with their blood, their tears, and even their lives.

And like our nation, it’s a survivor.