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Look for a book titled "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" by Ted Lawson. Lawson was command pilot of the #7 plane off the Hornet, and managed to forget to put down his flaps prior to takeoff. He missed sticking it into the water by about 6 feet, when his plane staggered off the end of the deck, and in fact dropped out of sight of the deck personnel before he gained enough airspeed to fly.

After the raid, Lawson's crew flew on to China, and ran into a storm off shore. It was getting dark, and so Lawson figured he could land on a beach, wait 'til dawn, and find the airstrip in daylight. The B-25 lost an engine as they came in on final, over the water, and hit the surf at about 120 mph. Lawson's left thigh was ripped open from crotch to knee as he flew thru the canopy, the co-pilot suffered the same to his right leg, the bombardier, McClure, was slashed up when he went thru the nose greenhouse, and the navigator broke both shoulders.

The crew washed ashore, still alive, and the only unhurt man, Thatcher, the gunner, connected up with Chinese guerillas, who smuggled the whole crew on stretchers to Chungking. Lawson wound up losing his leg above the knee to infection, and then got home to write his book.

You have to wonder if clinton, or baldwin, could have done it for real...

Thanks for the suggestion. Looking over things tonight, "nearly stalled" would probably be more accurate. If you have any suggestions as to a pilot who was there who would be willing to proof the article, let me know. -- Joel (author of posted article)

"Nearly stalled" may not be wholly accurate either. I was an Army pilot of a heavy twin -- but I wasn't there. Short field takeoffs put you into the air without as much airspeed as you want, and your choice is to climb or accelerate. If you climb near stall speed, any engine burp or gust can bring you down. The only real choice is to accelerate until you get to single engine flying speed. The B-25s presumably had 70 knots or so off the deck from the wind plus the Hornet's headway. With the additional lift from the propwash over the wings and flaps, the B-25 might have already been at or above stall speed so any acceleration would be gravy.

To an observer on the deck, watching the takeoffs would be "painful" because they would look like they're struggling to fly. However, they only needed 30 or so knots above their base airspeed (headwind plus headway) to be at the best airspeed to clean up the flaps, etc. In other words, the takeoffs would look a lot worse than they actually were.

Then there's the ground cushion whether you're over water or not. This is where you really need to find one of the actual pilots to determine what their briefing was. Within about 30 feet of the surface, the air under your wings is compressed slightly giving you a bunch extra lift. On short takeoffs, you can get "just" airborne, pull the gear up, and accelerate on the ground cushion to get the speed you need, clean up the flaps, and zoom off into the wild blue yonder. The critical zone is accelerating from liftoff to single engine flying speed -- maybe about 30 knots for a loaded B-25. No problem when the ground is ground. But they were presumably in heavy seas. How much was the "ground" undulating? It wouldn't do to try to ride a ground cushion over 30' waves!

The post below yours seems to accurately recount the movie with Van Johnson playing the part of the flapless pilot. What was left out is that one of the Hornet's crewmen lost an arm in one of the propellers of that airplane as it was running up. That was a serious distraction, and both the pilot and copilot missed the flaps item on the checklist. But the actual incident is proof that the takeoffs were anything but barely within the B-25's flight envelope. That's probably the only airplane that had to ride the ground cushion.

As I said, you've written a fine article!