The Impossible Carrier Launch
a heavy land-based army bomber really was flown off an aircraft carrier with no catapult in 1942, solved by engineering: stripping weight, training for a sub-500-foot takeoff, and a white line, wind over deck, and deck-pitch timing.
Everyone knows a catapult flings a plane off a carrier. In the spring of 1942 there wasn't one to spare, and the plane in question was never meant to be there at all: the B-25 Mitchell was a land-based medium bomber, twin engines, tons of fuel, a takeoff run longer than the deck it was parked on.
So the crews solved it, piece by piece. First they attacked the weight. Out came the belly gun turret, the armor, the heavy liaison radio; in went extra fuel tanks, until every spare pound was either fuel or gone. Some planes even carried broomsticks painted black in the tail where the guns used to be.
Then the takeoff itself. A Navy flier, Lieutenant Henry Miller, drilled the Army crews at Eglin Field until they could lift a loaded bomber off the ground in under 500 feet, far shorter than any normal runway roll.
And then the day. A white line was painted down the deck; each pilot kept his left wheel on it so his right wingtip cleared the carrier's island as he passed. The ship turned into the wind and ran at full speed, stacking wind over the deck. Each takeoff was timed to the rise of the bow, so the deck itself threw the nose upward at the last instant.
One after another, sixteen overloaded bombers rolled down a deck that was never built for them, and every single one made it into the air.
Verdict: NOT BS. They didn't have a catapult. They had a better idea.
The receipts are at bskiller.com/reels.
Sources: US Navy (Naval History and Heritage Command), National WWII Museum, Smithsonian.
Every claim in the film, checked against the record.
The full receipts — every claim, every source, checked against the record — are for BSKiller members. That is the whole point of the show: the receipts.