'' B-25H Mitchell ''

The B-25H incorporated the Mitchell's first really practical tail turret, fitted with twin 12.7 millimeter Brownings. The rear fuselage was made deeper to accommodate the turret. There was also a single flexible 12.7 millimeter Browning on each side of the fuselage, in staggered positions behind the wing. The staggering of the side gun positions helped keep the two gunners out of each other's way.

The top turret was moved forward to behind the cockpit, where it could contribute to the forward firepower in strafing attacks, and was changed to a new NAA design that gave the gunner a better field of view and was better contoured to reduce drag. A pair of small bumps were added on the top of the fuselage behind the front turret to keep the top turret from firing into the tail turret. Crew enthusiasm for such "ricochet generators" was not great, and the bumps were often removed in practice. The B-25H could carry 1,450 kilograms (3,200 pounds) of bombs, or could be fitted with stub pylons for eight HVARs and an belly rack for a single torpedo. There was no provision for a copilot, and as the B-25 had become thoroughly established as a low-level attacker, there was no bombardier, with the bombs targeted by the pilot through an eyeball sight.

The first B-25H was modified from a B-25C and flew in May 1943. B-25H production began to arrive at combat units in early 1944. A total of 1,000 B-25Hs was built. It does not appear any B-25Hs were supplied to the RAF or the Red Air Force.

248 B-25Hs ended up in USMC hands as "PBJ-1Hs". As with earlier PBJ-1 versions, the Marine aircraft were sometimes fitted with search radar. Production aircraft were delivered with AN/APS-2 or AN/APS-3 radar in a pod on the right wingtip. Some sources claim that there were field modifications that fitted radar to the nose instead, but it is a bit difficult to see where they found the room for it unless the weapons were deleted. Pictures do survive of PBJ-1Hs with the wingtip radar.

In field operations, the big 75 millimeter cannon did not prove as impressive as it looked. With manual loading, it had a low rate of fire, and the trajectory of its shell was much different from that of the bullets from the forward-firing machine guns, preventing the machine guns from being used to register the cannon. Salvo-fired HVARs proved a much more effective approach to heavy forward firepower, and while there some B-25 pilots who liked the big gun, it was often removed in the field. Presumably it was replaced with ballast, since it's hard to believe that pulling out such a big chunk of metal wouldn't unbalance aircraft trim.

One B-25H was fitted with twin Pratt & Whitney 18-cylinder R-2800-51 Double Wasp engines, each offering 1,490 kW (2,000 HP). The result was designated the "NA-98X Super Strafer". It looked much like a standard B-25H, except that it lacked the blister guns, had big prop spinners unique in the Mitchell line, featured squared-off wingtips, and was given many detail changes. The Super Strafer first flew at the end of March 1944. The more powerful engines gave it an impressive top speed of 560 KPH (350 MPH), but on 24 April the NA-98X suffered a structural failure during a fast low-level pass and smashed into the ground, killing the two crewmen on board. The USAAF did not proceed further with the variant.

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