![\"Mitchell](\"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/article-images\/IWM-mitchell.jpg\")
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Today (Thursday 6 August) IWM’s newly-repainted North American B-25J Mitchell was revealed in its new paint scheme for the first time.<\/p>\n
The aircraft now represents North American B-25J Mitchell 43-4064, which served with the 488th Bomb Squadron of the 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force, United States Army Air Forces, in the latter stages of the Second World War.<\/p>\n
The 340th Bomb Group was the inspiration for the Bomb Group represented in American author Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch 22. Heller served as a bombardier in the 488th Bomb Squadron. Crews were not allocated a specific aircraft in the 340th Bomb Group and personnel were interchanged between crews and aircraft. As a result, Joseph Heller flew in almost all of the aircraft operated by the 340th Bomb Group.<\/p>\n
Missions carried out by Heller and his fellow crew members in B-25J Mitchell 43-4064 formed the inspiration for some of the events in Heller’s classic novel Catch 22.<\/p>\n
North American B-25J Mitchell 43-4064 can be seen at IWM Duxford in the Conservation in Action hangar and will be displayed in the newly-transformed American Air Museum, at IWM Duxford, when it reopens in spring 2016.<\/p>\n
Chris Knapp, Section Head, Industrial and Large Object Conservation, IWM Duxford, said: “The Conservation Team carried out a structural survey and then a team of three Conservation staff repainted the aircraft within a six week period. I’m really pleased with the work they have done. The only element of the repainting that we didn’t undertake in-house was the nose art as we don’t have a sign writer on our staff. We have carried out painstaking research to ensure that the aircraft matches the original 43-4064. All lines and colour changes are taken from original photographs of the aircraft during the Second World War.”<\/p>\n
www.iwm.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today (Thursday 6 August) IWM’s newly-repainted North American B-25J Mitchell was revealed in its new paint scheme for the first time. The aircraft now represents North American B-25J Mitchell 43-4064, which served with the 488th Bomb Squadron of the 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force, United States Army Air Forces, in the latter stages of … Continue reading IWMs newly-painted North American B-25J Mitchell aircraft is revealed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[228,50,185,10],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-museum-news","tag-228","tag-august","tag-duxford-imperial-war-museum","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.airscene.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}