Milestones: He nailed it
U.S. Air Force vet returns to B–25 after six decades
Flying history
When asked what it costs to keep a 70-year-old bomber flying, owner Larry Kelley just shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know. “I can tell you what it takes in hours, though. This year we’ll be about 400-to-1 maintenance hours to flight hours.” Kelley, owner of the Delaware Aviation Museum Foundation, which owns B–25J Panchito and a host of other interesting airplanes and World War II gear, is quick to credit a small army of volunteers who toil endlessly on the beautifully polished bomber.
Based at Delaware Coastal Airport in Georgetown, Delaware, Panchito is tasked with helping to keep alive the contributions of the Greatest Generation—those men and women who, as Kelley puts it, helped create a world ruled by democracy when it could have been tyranny.
The museum uses funds from flight training in the B–25J to help pay expenses for maintaining it. Orientation flights, type ratings, and second-in-command type ratings are among the options for those looking to experience the heavy warbird.
I met up with Panchito to renew currency for the SIC type rating I earned earlier and joined Sid Ellner. Lurching the B–25 down the taxiway, I tried not to use the expensive and finicky brakes. “Brakes are a four-letter word around here,” said instructor Calvin Peacock.
Differential power is the best weapon for keeping the aircraft going kind of straight, but to stay out of the grass one must tap one of the brake pedals. Landings are equally challenging. Come in flat and you run out of kinetic energy, plunking the airplane onto the runway in a way that may break it. Come in steep and then allow the energy to bleed off slowly in the flare, touching down on the mains and then gently flying the nosegear down.
“It’s part of its mission,” said Peacock, “letting people experience the airplane, both young and old,” he said. “Particularly people who have been there and done that—to let them put their hands on it again, we’re especially happy to be able to do that.” —TBH
With the nimbleness more akin to a 24-year-old than an 84-year-old, Sid Ellner maneuvered his way from the B–25 jumpseat to the left seat, taking the controls of the lumbering bomber for the first time in 61 years. As instructed, he pushed the nose over right after takeoff, allowing the speed to build to 145 mph, deemed the safe single-engine speed, before pitching back up to a climb. Meanwhile, co-pilot Calvin Peacock deftly nudged the throttles, prop controls, and mixture to set up for a cruise climb. Ellner leveled off precisely on the assigned altitude and started a few turns, his mind rewinding to the mid-1950s when he trained in the B–25, preparing for his role as a B–36 pilot in the Strategic Air Command. A few minutes later, the long runway at Delaware Coastal Airport came into view, the windsock pointing accusingly across the pavement. Keeping the crosswind in mind, Ellner lined up Panchito for a long final, bringing it in for a steep approach, as he remembered doing during his U.S. Air Force days. With some coaching from Peacock, he rounded out and set the aging bomber down, a look of satisfaction on his face.
“You made an old man very happy today,” Ellner said with a smile after his orientation flight in Panchito, an airplane the veteran likely flew when he was undergoing multiengine training at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma, in the 1950s. Peacock, an expert on the B–25J’s history, said the airplane was based there at that time.
Ellner reunited with the bomber at its home base at Delaware Coastal Airport in Georgetown, Delaware, having flown his Cessna 172RG from White Plains, New York, where he is based. “Sitting there toward the end, I started to feel comfortable. A lot of it came back to me,” he said.
Ellner read about the Delaware Aviation Museum Foundation’s program offering flight training in Panchito in the form of type ratings, second-in-command type ratings, and orientation flights. He called Peacock, who is the director of training, and set the wheels in motion, wanting one more chance to fly his favorite airplane.
“Of all the airplanes that I’ve flown that was really the best,” he said, gesturing to the gleaming twin-engine bomber. “My favorite airplane. I have great memories.”
In ROTC while in college at the University of Connecticut, Ellner chose the Air Force in 1955, entering the service as part of Class 55-Q. “We were the very first class to go through as officers,” Ellner said. Previously, cadets went through flight training. Officers didn’t always adjust well to the flight training regimen, he said, noting it took the air force a couple of years to figure out how to handle officers as pilots in training.
Ellner’s training started in a Piper J–3 Cub at Bartow Air Base in Bartow, Florida, and he then quickly graduated to the T–6, with its 600-horsepower engine. “We thought that was the cat’s pajamas,” he said. His bomber track led him to the B–25 and ultimately to the B–36, where on a few occasions he flew live nuclear weapons. One mission had them flying nonstop from Spokane, Washington, to Guam, 35 hours without refueling. “That gives you a sense of the range of that airplane,” he said.
He left the military in 1957, but he didn’t leave flying or his friendships behind. “I think more of my friends and fellow classmates who aren’t here anymore. There’s something about flying relationships that you end up with friends for a lifetime. It’s a very unusual kind of relationship.”
Spry, sharp, and always ready with a funny quip, joke, or punch line, Ellner impressed Peacock, who has flown many veterans in Panchito. “Sid is a rather remarkable individual. Very, very sharp,” said Peacock. “He nailed” the flight. “There are not many military-trained B–25 pilots left who are still active pilots.”
Email [email protected]
Thomas B Haines
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