I may have shared this here before but it's worthy of a repeat.
My dad was a newspaper reporter in the SF bay area for almost 40 years and covered mainly aviation related stories. In 1967 he covered the 25th reunion of the Doolittle Raiders and it was held both at Travis AFB near Fairfield and also down at NAS Alameda where the raiders met the USS Hornet and embarked on their mission. A local pilot owned a B-25 and had it painted in a mostly accurate 1942 USAAF 'Doolittle' paint scheme for the event. One of the items on the schedule was a flight from Travis down to Alameda along the bay, a similar route the raiders took in '42. My dad was onboard and Jack Hilger, an airplane commander on B-25 #14 (14th to launch), rode in the copilot seat. General Doolittle was there as well but politely declined to go on the flight. My dad, seeing his lead, began his story with the sentence, "Have I flown on a B-25? Why children, I've flown in a B-25 on a day when even Jimmy Doolittle wouldn't go!" My dad rode most of the way in the glass nose and said it was a great view all the way. They swung in low over San Francisco and then landed at Alameda. That particular B-25 often flew low over my house in the east bay hills because the owner lived just east of where I lived and his son would fly the B-25 and buzz their property. It was really exciting to hear it coming and I blew through the screen door many times in the early '70s. The same group of guys operated a B-29 ("Fertile Myrtle"
and it too buzzed the house several times. Talk about a great sound. Anyway, that particular B-25 finally went to England for use in the 1977 movie "Hanover Street" and then on to Spain where it now resides in a museum. Below is a photo a buddy's dad took of the B-25 that my dad flew in from Travis to Alameda and the photo was taken at a small airshow at Oakland in 1967. I'm the kid under the nose looking up. The B-25's civil registration was N86427.
