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16 Medina County Gazette — Medina, O., ThursWWII25 Starred/Catch 22/BY DORIS ABELINGMEDINA — A retired movie star has been receiving tender loving care at Freedom Field.“Briefing Tim,” a World War II vintage B-25 Mitchell bomber was finally de-commissioned after doing her bit in the movie “Catch 22.” Tagged at the bargain basement price of $10,000, the old bomber was sold to Donald Buchele, resident of Columbia Station.Buchele, a research engineer with NASA and an antique plane buff, had the bomber ferried in from California to Freedom Field six months ago, and since then has spent every available moment reburbishing the old girl.For awhile it looked as though it was going to take as much time to repaint “Briefing Time” as the total number of hours in flying time credited to theplane’s log: 8000.A B-25 has 2200 square feet of area to cover. After the many hours it was required to clean the U.S. Air Corps color coats off the body, five gallons of primer were applied with eight gallons of final coating spray-painted over the primer.Painting on the “Briefing Time”lady turned out to be an artistic group effort.It required 300 hours for Buchele, Richard Rollins of Medina, Charles Stalmaker of Cuyahoga Falls, William Hutchison of Norton* and Raymond Bushnell of Lakewood, to recreate the leggy pin-up girl with the fetching backward glance.The North American B-25 Mitchell Bomber, named after General William Mitchell, was involved in a famous World War II exploit. Taking off from the carrier Hornet in the early days of the war, a group of B-25’s, under the command of Lt. General Jimmie Doolittle, bombed the Japanese mainland.The plane packed a nine foot 75 MM cannon and four .50 calibre machine guns in the nose, two forward firing .50 calibre machine guns on each side of the fusilage, twin .50’s in the tail and a .50 on each side of the blisters, or bubbles. It could carry two 500 pound bombs or one1000 pounder, depending on the mission and distance. The 1000 gallon tanks capacity used up 100 gallons of gas perflight hour for the 1700 h.p. engines. At higher speeds, twice that was required. It carried a crew of six.“Briefing Time,” however, came off the production line in 1943. She was destined to serve stateside in the 3547 Field Maintenance Squadron at Good-fellow Air Force Base, Texas.Why would anybody buy a B-25? Buchele has probably asked himself that question a hundred times.“Primarily I am interested in preserving an antique plane. Hopefully, I’d like to find someone interested in sponsoring the plane for an air show,” he says.Although Buchele is licensed to fly small craft, he is not checked out in commercial or military craft. “I’m really not interested in flying her,” he says. “I just like to turn the engines over once a month.” As it turns out, this is proper procedure for aircraft not on regular flying time.As a conversation piece, the B-25 is almost complete right down to the blisters and imitation guns.She is licensed, checked out maintenance-wise, painted, prettied up, and poised for something.She is not for sale.
Newspaper Details
Medina County Gazette
Medina, Ohio, US
Thu, Nov 18, 1971
Page 16
Full Page
Clipped by
Randy S.
USA 13 Mar 2023
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