B-25 Cockpit

This was taken at the Southern Museum of Flight when they brought in a B-25 in pieces to clean up and display. This aircraft had crashed into a lake in S.C. back in 1942 (I think) on a training flight and was recovered just a few years ago. Chemicals in the lake used to control algae played hell on the aluminum but the aircraft was somewhat preserved by the 3-4 ft of mud that was inside of it. You can even see the still intact thermos on the floor to the left. The best thing about this find was that the plane still had the bottom gun turret. There are only 2 known to still exist int eh world and this is one of them. There were removed and junked because of the way it worked. You looked through a periscope out the bottom of the plane and no one could fire the guns with out getting airsick because of this configuration. The turret survived because of the unique way of stowing it. The turret rode up and down on a giant screw and was stowed flush with the bottom of the airplane.