Victor Tatelman: World War II B-25 Pilot in the Pacific

 | Aviation History  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Only 15 years had passed since Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic, and shortly thereafter the Dole ‘Pineapple Derby’ had resulted in several deaths when a handful of daring aviators attempted to fly from California to the Hawaiian Islands. In 1942, it was still a chancy undertaking. Those who lived to tell about it usually recalled that it seemed as soon as they were out of sight of land their engines went into ‘auto-rough,’ and the navigators had the impression that their island destinations were shrinking in size. The 499th was only the second B-25 group to cross the Pacific, and the Army Air Forces was still learning.

After Oahu, their next stop was Christmas Island, followed by Samoa; Fiji; New Caledonia; Brisbane, Australia; and finally an airstrip at Reed River, near Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Altogether, the 345th Bomb Group’s Pacific trip took two weeks. At Reed River they waited for their ground crews — who had traveled by ship — to get to Port Moresby, New Guinea. Then they flew on to Port Moresby, set up camp and got ready for combat.

Allied troops had landed at Buna, on the north coast of New Guinea, in the fall of 1942. The 345th, now part of General George C. Kenney’s Fifth Air Force, was to support this effort. Their base at Port Moresby was ideally situated, only about 100 miles from Buna, across the mountainous backbone of New Guinea. The troops at Buna, mostly Australian infantry, were tasked with driving the Japanese out of Salamaua and taking Lae. Because they lacked a beach to set up a supply point by sea, they had to be supplied by airdrop, and the 345th got the job. It was not long before the 345th became known to the entire 5th Bomber Command as the ‘Biscuit Bombers.’ Once the ground troops had established themselves ashore and were advancing, however, the B-25s began dropping bombs instead of biscuits, with Salamaua, Lae and Finchhaven as their first targets.

At that juncture an inventive character named Paul I. Gunn effectively changed the way Tatelman and the other B-25 pilots would approach operations in the Pacific. Gunn — known to most as ‘Pappy’ — had run an airline in the Philippines and was put out of business when the Japanese occupied the islands. He then offered his services to General Douglas MacArthur, and General Kenney made him head of maintenance for the entire Fifth Air Force. Gunn contributed many useful ideas, among which was a method of reconfiguring the B-25s for low-level bombing. He believed they would be more effective in ground support if they operated at treetop level, and he convinced Kenney and MacArthur to try it. After six weeks of medium-level bombing, the B-25s were modified as Gunn suggested. The bombardier nose was removed and replaced with one containing eight .50-caliber fixed machine guns, fired by the pilot. A pilot bomb release was also installed.

The 499th Squadron, now known as the ‘Bats Outa Hell,’ took up its new mission of strafing and low-level bombing with enthusiasm, and Tatelman — along with the other pilots and crews — learned how to put the new weapons to good use. Tatelman’s aircraft, B-25C Serial No. 41-12971, was already dubbed Dirty Dora when he began flying missions in her. The plane had been transferred from the 38th Bomb Group and was received by the 499th Squadron in mid-1943.

Through a stroke of luck, Tatelman learned how Dora got her name. It was the policy of the Fifth Air Force that each of its combat flight crews received a week’s leave in Sidney, Australia, about every six weeks. At the time Sidney was largely devoid of young men, many of whom had been sent to North Africa to join British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s campaign against German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps. That meant visiting airmen were usually popular with the ladies in Australia. On one leave in Sydney, Tatelman met the 38th Bomb Group pilot who had originally flown Dirty Dora and had named her. He explained that the Mitchell was named after a young woman who had moved in with him for the week he was visiting Sydney. It seemed that the original Dora had a sensual temperament and would, at certain moments, scream out the most profane obscenities. Hence, the name ‘Dirty Dora.’

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Airborne Operations, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, World War II

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.