Visitor from the past

Bruce Crosby/McCook Gazette

Warbirds always draw a crowd when they stop for fuel at McCook's Ben Nelson Regional Airport, like this B-25J did Monday on its way back to Texas. The land-based Mitchell gained fame as the improvised mount for Gen. Jimmy Doolittle's raiders, who took off from an aircraft carrier to bomb Tokyo not long after Pearl Harbor. This plane, built in 1944 and restored by the Commemorative Air Force, is flown as a U.S. Marine Corps ground-attack aircraft, a PBJ-1J, complete with 12 machine guns in the nose and two more in the tail.

Bruce Crosby/McCook Gazette

Bruce Crosby/McCook Gazette