At a.m.
on March 3rd, 1943, Major Paul Papy gun pushed the throttles forward on a heavily modified B-25C Mitchell bomber as it screamed 50 ft above the Bismar Sea, heading directly toward a Japanese convoy of 16 transport ships and eight destroyers.
44 years old, former Barnstormer pilot, zero formal engineering degree.
The aircraft he was flying shouldn’t exist, according to North American Aviation Engineers.
They told him it was aerodynamically impossible, structurally unsound, tactically suicidal.
Gun had ignored them.
He’d spent 6 months in a makeshift workshop at Port Moresby, ripping out the bombarder compartment, welding 850 caliber machine guns into the nose, adding four more in package guns on the fuselage sides, 12 forward firing machine guns, 3,200 rounds per minute combined rate of fire.
The B-25 had become a flying gun platform that could deliver more concentrated firepower than any aircraft in the Pacific theater.
The engineers said it would never fly.
Too noseheavy.
The added weight would destroy the center of gravity.
The recoil from 12 guns firing simultaneously would tear the airframe apart or stall the aircraft mid-flight.
North American Aviation refused to approve the modifications.
The Army Air Force’s technical command called it a waste of resources.
In the next 72 hours, Gun’s impossible gunship would help sink 12 Japanese ships, kill 3,000 enemy soldiers, and change how the United States fought the war in the Pacific.
But first, he had to prove the engineers wrong by flying straight into the teeth of the largest Japanese naval convoy to enter the Bismar Sea in 8 months.
This is the story of how one man’s refusal to accept limitations turned a medium bomber into a ship killer and how 3 days in March 1943 rewrote tactical aviation doctrine for the rest of World War II.
Paul Irvin Gun was born on October 18th, 1899 in Quipman, Arkansas.
His father was a farmer.
His mother died when Paul was six.
By age 14, he was working full-time in sawmills to help support his younger siblings.
He had no formal education past 8th grade.
No technical training, no prospects for anything beyond manual labor.
Then in 1917, guns saw his first airplane.
A barn stormer landed in a field outside equipment.
The pilot was performing at a county fair.
$5 for a 10-minute ride.
Gun spent two weeks wages for those 10 minutes.
When he climbed out of that aircraft, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.
He enlisted in the Navy in November 1917, applied for flight training.
The Navy rejected him.
Insufficient education.
Gun spent the next two years as a mechanic on destroyers, learning diesel engines, ship systems, anything mechanical he could study.
He applied for naval aviation again in 1919.
Except this time he earned his wings in 1920 at age 21.
Gun flew scout planes off battleships for four years.
He was good at it, natural pilot, exceptional spatial awareness, comfortable at low altitude where most pilots became disoriented.
But the peacetime Navy offered limited advancement.
By 1924, Gunn was still a junior officer with no path to command.
He resigned and went into civilian aviation.
He barnstormed across the Midwest for three years.
Air shows, stunt flying, anything that paid.
He crashed twice, survived both times.
In 1927, he joined the naent commercial aviation industry, flew mail routes, passenger charter flights, cargo halls.
By 1928, he was chief pilot for Philippine Airlines in Manila.
29 years old, making good money, married to a Filipino woman named Polly Bostik.
They had four children.
Gun finally had stability.
Then December 7th, 1941 destroyed everything.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Eight hours later, they bombed Clarkfield in the Philippines.
Gun watched Japanese aircraft destroy most of the US Army Air Force’s fighters on the ground.
Within days, Japanese forces invaded Luzon.
Manila fell.
Gun evacuated his family south to Baton.
The plan was to get them on an evacuation ship to Australia.
They didn’t make it.
Japanese forces captured Baton in April 1942.
Pi and the four children were taken prisoner, sent to interment camps.
Gun had been flying supply missions when Baton fell.
He escaped to Australia with nothing but the clothes he wore and a photograph of his family.
For 3 months, Gun tried everything to get his family released.
He contacted the International Red Cross.
He sent messages through neutral countries.
He offered to trade himself for their release.
Nothing worked.
The Japanese weren’t negotiating.
Thousands of Americans and Filipinos were in those camps.
The military situation was desperate.
Individual family releases weren’t possible.
By July 1942, guns stopped asking permission and started taking action.
If the military couldn’t rescue his family, he’d make himself valuable enough that they’d give him the resources to do it himself.
He needed to become indispensable, and he needed to kill as many Japanese as possible until they gave him what he wanted.
Gun rejoined the army air forces in August 1942 with the rank of major.
His official role was maintenance officer for the third attack group, fifth air force based in Port Moresby, New Guinea.
His actual role became much more important.
General George Kenny, commander of fifth air force, had a problem.
His bomber units were getting slaughtered trying to attack Japanese shipping.
The standard anti-shipping tactic in 1942 was high alitude level bombing.
B17s and B-25s would fly at 10,000 to 15,000 feet and drop bombs hoping to hit moving ships.
The hit rate was approximately 2%.
Terrible odds.
Japanese ships had time to maneuver.
A AA fire was accurate at that altitude.
American bomber losses were unsustainable.
Kenny wanted a better solution.
He’d heard about skip bombing, flying low over water and releasing bombs that would skip across the surface like stones, hit the target ship at waterline level.
The technique had been used successfully against targets in Europe, but never widely adopted in the Pacific.
The problem was that flying low and slow made bombers vulnerable to defensive fire.
Japanese ships bristled with AA guns.
A B-25 approaching at low altitude would be torn apart before getting close enough to release bombs.
Unless you could suppress that defensive fire, strafe the ship first, kill the AA gun crews, then skip the bombs into the hull.
But American bombers weren’t designed for strafing.
The B-25 Mitchell had defensive guns, turrets on top and in the tail.
It had a bombardier’s position in the nose with a single 50 caliber machine gun for forward defense.
Not enough firepower to suppress a Japanese destroyer’s AA batteries.
Gun looked at the B-25 and saw potential.
The bombardier’s position in the nose was large, complex, filled with the Nordon bomb site and associated equipment.
That equipment weighed approximately 600 lb and took up the entire forward compartment.
For high altitude level bombing, the bombardier needed space and visibility.
For lowaltitude skip bombing, you didn’t need a bombardier.
The pilot could release bombs manually.
That entire nose compartment was wasted space.
What if you removed it? Stripped out the Nordon sight, the bomber to your seat, the optical equipment, sealed off the compartment, and turned it into a gun mount packet full of 50 caliber machine guns.
Point them all forward.
Give the pilot a trigger on his control yolk.
Suddenly, the B-25 becomes a gunship that can suppress defensive fire while approaching for a bomb run.
Gun proposed the modification to his commanding officer in September 1942.
The officer forwarded it to fifth air force engineering command.
They rejected it.
Modifying the B-25’s nose would affect center of gravity.
The bombardier compartment was forward of the wing.
Adding weight there would make the aircraft nose heavy.
It might not be controllable.
Besides, the recoil from multiple guns firing would create structural stress the airframe wasn’t designed to handle.
North American Aviation, the B-25’s manufacturer, would never approve such modifications.
Gun didn’t wait for approval.
He had a workshop at Port Moresby.
Basic tools, welding equipment, aircraft parts cannibalized from damaged planes.
He selected a B-25C that had taken flack damage in the tail section.
The aircraft was scheduled for depot level repairs that would take months.
Guns signed it out for modification testing.
He started work on September 12th, 1942.
First, he stripped out the entire Bombardier’s compartment.
The Nordan site went into storage.
The bombardier seat, the instrument panel, the optical glass nose cone, everything removed.
The forward fuselage became an empty shell.
Next, gunfabricated gun mounts.
He couldn’t use standard aircraft gun mounts.
Those were designed for turrets or flexible installations.
He needed fixed guns that pointed straight ahead.
He built the mounts from steel plate, welding them directly to the aircraft’s structural frames.
Four guns in the nose arranged in a square pattern, two guns on each side, angled slightly inward so their fire would converge at 400 yd.
The ammunition feed system was complex.
Each 50 caliber gun needed its own belt feed.
Standard ammunition boxes held 500 rounds.
Gun installed boxes behind the gun mounts, running feed shoots through the fuselage structure.
The pilot would have manual charging handles for each gun.
If one jammed, he could clear it without leaving his seat.
But eight guns created a weight problem.
Each 50 caliber Browning M2 weighed 84 lb.
Eight guns totaled 672 pounds plus ammunition, mounts, feed systems, approximately 1,200 lb total.
All concentrated in the nose ahead of the center of gravity.
Gun needed to balance that weight somehow.
He removed equipment from the rear of the aircraft.
The tail gun position stayed, needed for defense, but he stripped out non-essential items.
Excess radio equipment, auxiliary fuel tanks the aircraft didn’t need for shorter range missions.
Sound insulation.
By the time he finished, he’d removed about 800 lb from the rear fuselage.
Not enough to completely balance the nose guns, but enough that the aircraft should fly, if barely.
The test flight happened on the 2nd of October, 1942.
Gun flew it himself.
No co-pilot.
If the modifications failed catastrophically, he didn’t want anyone else dying.
The ground crew thought he was insane.
The engineering officer refused to sign off on the flight.
Gun took off anyway.
The B25 was noseheavy.
Very nose heavy.
Gun needed constant back pressure on the yolk to maintain level flight.
The trim tabs helped, but not enough.
Landing would be dangerous.
He’d have to come in faster than normal.
Carry power through touchdown to keep the tail down.
One mistake in the nose wheel would collapse, but it flew.
The modifications hadn’t destroyed the airframe.
And when gun test fired the eight guns over the ocean, the recoil was manageable.
The aircraft shuttered.
The nose wanted to pitch up from the recoil forces, but gun could control it.
He fired 3-second bursts.
The tracers converged 400 yd ahead, exactly where Gun wanted them.
Any ship at that range would take devastating fire.
He landed the modified B-25 at Port Moresby 90 minutes later.
Rough landing.
The nose wheel hit hard, but it held.
The aircraft survived.
Gun had built the world’s first B-25 gunship.
General Kenny saw the test results and immediately ordered more conversions.
But North American Aviation still refused to support the modifications officially.
They wouldn’t provide technical drawings or engineering assistance.
Gun would have to convert each aircraft manually in his workshop.
It would take weeks per aircraft.
Gun trained a team, mechanics who could weld, who understood aircraft structures, who were willing to work 16-hour days.
By January 1943, they’d converted 12 B25s to gunship configuration.
The third attack group now had a squadron of aircraft that could strafe and skip bombs simultaneously.
They called them commerce destroyers.
The first combat test came on February 15th, 1943.
A flight of six gunship B-25s attacked a Japanese convoy near New Guinea.
They approached at 200 ft, guns firing.
The strafing run killed dozens of Japanese sailors manning AA positions.
The ship’s defensive fire was suppressed enough that the B-25s could close to skip bombing range.
Four ships hit, two sank, zero American losses.
Kenny was impressed.
He ordered Gun to modify more aircraft and refine the tactics.
But Gun wasn’t satisfied with eight guns.
He wanted more firepower.
He added four more 50s in waist positions, two on each side of the fuselage behind the wing.
Now the B-25 had 12 forward firing guns, 3,200 rounds per minute combined rate of fire.
It was by far the most heavily armed aircraft in the Pacific theater.
On March 1st, 1943, reconnaissance aircraft spotted a major Japanese convoy in the Bismar Sea.
16 transport ships carrying 6,900 troops of the 51st Infantry Division from Rabal to Lei.
Eight destroyers escorting.
This was the largest Japanese reinforcement effort in months.
If those troops reached Lei, they’d significantly strengthen Japanese positions in New Guinea.
Fifth Air Force needed to stop that convoy.
General Kenny assembled every available aircraft B17s for high alitude bombing, a 20s Havocs for strafing, and guns modified B-25 gunships for skip bombing.
The attack would begin on March 3rd at dawn.
Waves of aircraft hitting the convoy from multiple altitudes simultaneously.
The Japanese wouldn’t know where to concentrate their defensive fire.
Gun led the gunship formation.
12 B-25s in three flights of four aircraft each.
They would approach from the north at 50 feet above the water.
Stray first to suppress AA fire, then skip bomb the transports.
Simple plan, brutal execution.
At a.m., guns flight reached the convoy.
16 ships in loose formations.
Destroyers on the perimeter, transports clustered in the center.
AA guns already firing at the B7s attacking from 10,000 ft above.
The Japanese hadn’t seen the low-flying B-25s yet.
They were focused on the high altitude threat.
Gun selected his target.
A transport ship approximately 400 ft long, probably carrying 500 to 600 troops plus supplies.
He lined up the nose, armed all 12 guns, descended to 50 feet above the water.
At 600 yd, the Japanese spotted him.
AA guns swiveled toward the approaching bomber.
25 mm cannons opened fire.
Tracers reached out.
Gun pressed the trigger.
1250 caliber machine guns fired simultaneously.
The noise was overwhelming.
The aircraft shuttered from recoil, but the tracers converged on the transport superructure.
The concentrated fire was devastating.
AA gun crews died instantly.
Shells detonated the ready ammunition around the guns.
Secondary explosions rippled across the ship’s deck.
At 300 yards, gun released his bombs.
Four 500 lb bombs configured for skip bombing.
They hit the water, skipped twice, slammed into the transport at waterline level.
The explosions tore open the hull.
Water flooded the troop compartments.
The ship began listing immediately.
Gun pulled up hard, banking right to clear the convoy.
His wingmen followed, attacking the next transport.
Within 90 seconds, three transports were sinking.
The B-25 gunships had proven their worth.
The attack continued for 3 days, March 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
Fifth Air Force threw everything at the convoy.
B7s bombed from altitude.
A 20s strafe survivors in lifeboats and guns.
B-25 gunships skip bombed any ship still afloat.
By March 5th, all 16 transport ships had been sunk or damaged beyond use.
Four destroyers sank.
Four fled back to Rabal.
Of the 6,900 Japanese troops the convoy was transporting, approximately 3,000 died.
The rest were scattered across the ocean, clinging to wreckage, waiting for rescue that never came.
The Battle of the Bismar Sea was the most decisive air naval engagement in the Pacific War to that point.
and guns modified B-25 gunships were credited with eight confirmed ship kills across the three days.
The impossible aircraft that engineers said would never work had just proven it could dominate enemy shipping.
North American aviation changed their position immediately.
They sent engineers to Port Moresby to study guns modifications.
By April 1943, the B-25G model entered production with a factoryinstalled 75mm cannon in the nose.
Not quite as effective as 12 machine guns, but it proved the concept was valid.
Later variants like the B-25H and B25J incorporated guns forwardfiring gun modifications directly from the factory.
But for Gun, the victory was bittersweet.
His family remained in Japanese captivity.
The intelligence reports said conditions in the internment camps were deteriorating.
Food shortages, disease.
He’d proven himself valuable to the war effort, but it hadn’t brought his family closer to freedom.
Gun continued flying combat missions through 1943.
He modified more aircraft.
He trained other pilots in skip bombing tactics.
He shot down two Japanese fighters in dog fights despite flying a bomber.
He earned the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, the Distinguished Flying Cross.
But none of it mattered as much as getting his family back.
In February 1945, American forces liberated Manila.
The prison camps opened.
Gun received word on February 7th that his wife and children had been found.
Alive, malnourished, suffering from 3 years of captivity.
But alive, he flew to Manila the next day, took emergency leave, reunited with them for the first time since 1942.
Polly told him about the camps, the starvation, the disease, the casual cruelty, how they’d survived by protecting each other by maintaining hope that Paul would find a way to get them out.
She didn’t know he’d spent 3 years killing Japanese to force that outcome.
She only knew he’d come for them like he’d promised.
Gun stayed in the military after the war.
He was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
He continued working on aircraft modifications, though nothing as revolutionary as the B25 gunship.
He test flew new aircraft types.
He served as adviser on tactical aviation doctrine.
On October 11th, 1957, Gun was flying a routine test flight in a B25 near Clark Air Base in the Philippines.
Engine failure on takeoff.
The aircraft crashed.
Gun died instantly.
He was 57 years old.
The Air Force buried him with full military honors at Manila American Cemetery.
The headstone lists his decorations.
Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oakleaf Cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with Oakleaf Cluster, Legion of Merit.
It doesn’t mention the B-25 gunship, doesn’t mention the 12 Impossible Machine guns.
Doesn’t mention how one man’s refusal to accept expert opinion changed aerial combat forever.
But the pilots who flew those modified B25s, remember, they called them papy specials.
They knew every rivet in those aircraft had been placed by a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
a man who saw a problem and fixed it.
Regardless of what the experts said was impossible.
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