FLYING IN A B-25 BOMBER

​I gave myself a Father’s Day present yesterday – I took a ride in a B-25J bomber from WWII. This particular plane was built in 1944 and flew about twenty missions out of Corsica, bombing targets in Italy. The B-25B is the earlier model of the plane that became famous for its role in the Doolittle Raid to Tokyo after Pearl Harbor.
 
The Arizona Commemorative Air Force is an all-volunteer organization based in Mesa, Arizona, and has a number of restored WWII aircraft that make up their aircraft museum. They offer rides in the planes out of their home airfield, and then take some of the planes on a Summer Tour to airfields in other states, where they offer tours and rides to the locals. They have a website   azcaf.org   that gives you the schedules of the museum and Summer Tours.
 
They were in Albuquerque for four days so I bought tickets for myself and my youngest son. The flight lasted about 25 minutes, with a half-hour for check-in and briefings. It was surprisingly adventurous because passengers have the freedom to move around inside the airplane during flight. In particular, Scott and I were in seats a couple of feet behind the pilots, were able to get up and stand behind them, and then, for about six to seven minutes each, we crawled through the access tunnel into the front nosecone and sat in the seat of the front gunner’s position. It was a thrill.
 
After flying over the city, the pilots performed a few maneuvers above the mesas north of Albuquerque, and then took us on a simulated strafing run of a dry riverbed from about 2500 feet. Had the nosecone machine gun worked, I would have scared a lizard or two.
 
The plane was noisy even with ear protection, but I was surprised that there was not much shaking. It was a tight fit, however. In the photo, I’m the little guy, and I moved pretty easily around the cockpit area; my son was not only cramped, but did not have the room to get up and sit in the seat of the nosecone; he stayed on the floor and looked out the windows. I can’t imagine being up in the air with a full crew (two pilots, a navigator, a front nose-gunner, a bombardier, a top gunner, two side gunners, and a rear gunner) and a full bomb load, while someone is shooting at the plane.
 
The enclosed bomb bay began right behind our seats and took up 80 percent of the fuselage before it got to the back part of the plane where the other crew members were, maybe ten to twelve feet. There’s only voice communication between the front and back. The bomb bay carried about 3000 pounds of bombs, while the plane had a range of 1350 miles. It routinely flew at 25,000 feet. Other than a hatch over the pilots and two entry hatches along the bottom, there was no opening big enough to “jump out” with a parachute. This is where the description “a coffin with propellers” came from.
 
I hope to ride in a B-17 someday.
 
Let me emphasize that my Father’s Day present was not riding in the bomber. It was buying my son a ticket so we could ride in it together. I don’t think there’s a lot of time left for major memories with my sons, but I got an instant classic for only a few dollars. The picture of the two of us is now one of my favorites and it gave him a memory for the rest of his life.
 
Update on Books
 
I’ve been working on a major adult novel (major means a lot of pages) for the last year and finished it at the end of April. I let it sit for a month, reworked it, and then sent it on to my editor.
 
I had planned on self-publishing the book. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the self-publishing environment, as well as wanting to have control over the timing of the release of the book once it was printed. I also wanted to find out some of the newly-established methods for reviewing and marketing the book.
 
I changed my mind. I went with my typical process and submitted it to the publisher of my other books. I will be working with my previous editor, who I like a lot, and will go with the publisher’s schedule. That means the printed book will be released sometime in 2022. I don’t like a review and publishing process that takes almost a year, but it is what it is. It was also the cheaper alternative.
 
I also decided to make a major change that required structural reworking and rewriting: I quit treating the novel as a sequel to Smoke Dreams, my novel published in 2013. On reviewing what I had, I found the story included all the background from Smoke Dreams that I needed, and, by considering the story unrelated to the first, it made the story much smoother. It also resolved the reader of the second book supposedly having to read the first. The ending became more unexpected and dramatic but possibly less pleasing. I want to see what my editor thinks.
 
I’ve been told that the launch date for War Train, the tenth Mogi Franklin Mystery, has been delayed from September 1 to October 15. I think that sucks, but I have no control over the dates. The reason given was that it gives more time for it to be reviewed.
 
The printed proof for War Train was given to me late, and I spent a week reviewing it. I found, as with the other proofs I have reviewed, a surprising number of typographical errors; it’s possible that the software used for moving a Word document into the publishing application is not very precise.
 
I also found a number of changes to the text that had been done after my editor and I had produced the final version. A second editor in the process had made changes to the manuscript (which is okay) and then did not provide them to me for review (which is not okay). He may have thought that I would see them during the review of the proof, but I still consider it a violation of trust and a bad way of doing things.
 
I responded back to the publisher with the proof changes that I expect to be made, including my changes to the second editor’s changes. We’ll see what gets printed.