I followed up with Mr. Robert Yanacek, administrator for the excellent website for VMB-613 to inquire about the use of the Tiny Tim 11.75 inch rocket on the PBJ. He provided the following USMC pictures of a VMB-612 PBJ-1J and referred me to two books - PBY Mitchell Units of the Pacific War by Jerry Scutts (one of the photos was scanned from this book) and Leatherneck Bombers by Alan Carey. You can order the latter from Mr. Carey at http://www.alanc.carey.freeservers.com/photo5.html
A 1/72 PBJ-1J nose with radome is available from Obscureco Models at http://www.obscureco.com/. Note that there is no upper turret on the aircraft in the photo and it has rocket stubs under the wings.
10 Tiny Tim missions were flown by VMB-612 between 21 July 1945 and 14 August. I can’t imagine that it was very accurate - the rocket was dropped and then fired when it reached the end of a lanyard - but on the last mission, they got a hit on a 350 foot ship. If nothing else, it must have been scary - for all concerned.
that would be a heck of a subject. wow.
joe
Would be an interesting conversion for the soon to be released Hasegawa kit.
Regards, Rick
It was supposedly accurate out to 4000 yards, but I kind of doubt it. However, if you hit something, it would know it’d been hit since it was basically a rocket propelled 500 pound bomb…
China Lake test pictures from Robert Yanacek
Turtle, my man, you may have just provided me with a godsend. I have a True Detail Tiny Tim in resin, and a few months ago we had a long thread about who carried these monstersa and other details. You can get some good hits on the rocket on a Google search, some with color photos, They were even carried (rareky) under the wing of the F-84E/G in Korea, as well as on Corsairs. But I have this AcMin B-25G I’ve been dying to find some interesting way to build. I wonder if I could turn it into a PBJ-1G (I don’t know if those went operational or not). Then I could paint it a colorful blue scheme and put that giant rocket under the wing. Anybody got suggestions on whether or not this would be doable, or accurate? And where would I get photos and markings of a PBJ-1G?
What’s the address of this squadron’s web site, Turtle?
thnx
Tom
PS: Those China Lake photos directly above are of a B-25 G or H, or the Navy versions thereof. As for the lanyard (and look at the size of that lanyard!!), the later Genie missile operated exactly the same way, except it was an air to air rocket for blasting bomber formations, and carried a 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead. Needless to say, it didn’t have to be very accurate. Oh, and it wasn’t a real popular weapon with the Canadians, over whose country the Genie would have been used in the event of a bomber attack. Imagine the damage on the ground.
These is one of the links in the other PBJ string in this forum:
http://www.vmb-613.com/aircraft.html
You can navigate to all the other goodies from there.
My guess is that the China Lake aircraft is an H and the operational aircraft were Js. If I remember correctly, the Navy only bought one G and each of the defensive gun installations were very different from the Hs.
Yeah, according to my favorite reference from the period, dated 1946, it confirms what you said, they Navy only bought one G, and the the only difference between the G and the H is that the top turret is moved forward on the H. Darn, if I really had the onions, I’d modify that $50 AcMin kit and make it into a PBJ-1H. However, I don’t know where I’d find any photos or accurate plans to do that anyway. So, I’ll stick to the original plan: try to find some colorful markings that don’t take my food budget away for a month, add the Waldron radion room and the True Details wheels (which need some work to look right), and just depend on AcMin’s find tooling to give me a model to be proud of. I’m just so sick of OD over neutral gray I can’t stand to look at another plane in that scheme. And I strongly suspect that the B-25G on AcMin’s box photo, despite the fact they say it’s OD over NG, I’ll bet it’s OD over white, which was a popular color for Altantic coast ASW aircraft. Navy and AAF. Large areas of white, I mean. The navy, as far as I know, wasn’t too hot on OD for their aircraft. But I sure like that Altantic fleet scheme with the gray over white, with the white wrapping all the way around in places.
Aha, my big, fat bad. According to Turtle’s reference, and these guys certainly ought to know, there were lots of differences between the G and the H model of the B-25, aside from the relocation of the top turret. This squadron’s sight lists no fewer than 14 machine guns on the H. Straight from the factory (this was before field mods, mind you) the G model only had two fixed .50s firing from the nose, primarily for range-finding for the 75 mm cannon, as well as deck-clearing, to keep the AAA gunners heads down as ship were attacked. The G also had two .50s in the top turret, two in the bottom turret and two in the tail. The bottom turrets were deleted from the G at some point in the production run. My references claim that all G models were rebuilt C models, which, of course, had bombardier noses. Thus, the G and H models were two feet shorter than other B-25s. So the reason they look stubby is because they are.
I still wish I could do a Marine Corps PBJ-1H from AcMin.
tom