I was a middle-aged cub reporter in ’85, still getting unexciting assignments, amateur talent contests and interviews with jelly jar collectors. Then one day……”I want you to cover an auction today,” my editor said.
“Oh, Chief,” I pleaded, when will I get to write about something exciting? What kind of stuff is being auctioned?”
“There’s just one item, a B-25 bomber. I think it’s a World War II plane.”
(Oh, my God! I thought, he doesn’t realize the tremendous significance!) Anyone who’d seen the 1944 movie, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” five times would not want to miss this historic auction. I tried to hide my excitement. “Okay, Chief, I’ll get down to Caldwell Airport and do a piece on this auction thing.”
The movie is about the Army Air Force’s Tokyo bombing raid, four months after the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese. Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led 16 B-25 bombers on a mission that convinced the enemy they had awakened a sleeping giant.
After joining the Air Force in 1949 I got to fly as a B-25 passenger a few times and was once warned by an old crew chief, “Never take your parachute off in a B-25!” They did have accidents. One flew through a thick fog into the 78th floor of the Empire State Building in 1945. Fourteen died, crew members and office workers, but the building had only repairable impact site damage. Just a week later I rode the elevator to the skyscraper’s observation deck with two of my high school classmates.
Only a handful of people were waiting for the auction to begin when I arrived at the airport. The gleaming silver bomber was parked outside on the tarmac. I began my interviews. An Air Force vet said he had vivid memories of the plane including his low level flight over downtown Boston with one engine on fire. He admitted he was just a nostalgic (?) bystander and not a bidder.
Two potential bidders, buddies from New Vernon, hoped to haul the plane onto their property where it would be an historic lawn ornament. A Morristown man wanted to open a hobby shop with the bomber sitting outside to attract customers. The shop, he said, would be located in a town who’s planning board would okay the roadside B-25.
The auction lasted about two minutes, but a book including all the thoughts of bidders and bystanders would be more than one volume. As the auctioneer grabbed the gavel, I could feel the tension in the room begin to rise.
I had to get a grip on myself. (I’m here as a reporter, not a bidder…..Yeah, but) (Forget the “yeah buts, start taking notes!)
“This is an as-is sale,” the auctioneer began.
(That’s where you get the real bargains!)
“There are no guarantees,” he continued.
(Who needs a guarantee? You’d own a genuine historic B-25 bomber unless a fussy planning board didn’t cooperate. It wouldn’t be such an imposing obect in a neighborhood. The wing span is only 67 feet.)
“We start the bids at $1,100,” the man announced.
(I could go without lunches for a couple of years and put off buying a new car by driving downhill a lot.)
“I’ll take it for $1,100,” someone shouted. I looked up, startled. ( Who said that? Oh dear, was that me? How will I explain this to my wife?)
What a relief! Everyone was staring at the hobby shop guy and someone was shaking his hand. I was just shaking.
I never heard tell of the B-25 again. I guess it was missing in planning board action.
Imagine That 