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Payback – B-25s settle the score on the Rising Sun

The Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum’s B-25J Mitchell swings right with bomb bays open and ready to strike near sunset. (Photo by John Dibbs/Facebook.com/theplanepicture)

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As I sat silently in my B-25—shrewdly named “Fickle Finger of Fate”—awaiting the signal from the Navy deckhand to start my engines, I thought long and hard about how I ended up here and about the unknown that lay ahead. Sitting on the pitching deck of the USS Hornet, with 11 other B-25s ahead of me and four more behind, I watched as the lead B-25, piloted by Col. Jimmy Doolittle, began its short run...

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION

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