The planes are restored to air-worthiness - for a significantly larger amount, you can actually go up for a flight around the airport in one of these pieces of history. I didn't have that kind of money, but it would definitely be WAY up high on my list if I hit the lottery - these planes were meant to be flown. Looking at them, you gain extra appreciation for the thankless job those airmen were doing. The cabins were unpressurized, stark, and unarmored - there's a reason the senior airman was in his late 20s...
Enough talk. More pics...
B17 up close
TheBoy and Ma Deuce
B24 up close
B17 cockpit
Every boy needs a belt-fed 50!
Ball turret
Could lead to an earth-shattering kaboom
P51 Mustang
Mustang, backlit
TheBoy photobombs!
B17 from distance
B24 from distance
It was $18 *VERY* well spent. We got to gawk at impressive military hardware from the time of my grandfather - and do some father-son bonding to boot. Looking at the planes, it struck me that, for the most part, they were manned by guys a lot closer to my son's age than mine. That was a sobering thought indeed. And then we all went to Five Guys Burgers for some extra-greasy goodness.
Looking back, I should have stopped at the range on the way home to truly make it a guy trifecta...
That is all.
8 comments:
You'll find aviation faces the same threats our gun rights do and usually from the same type of people.
Interesting, that was a P51 C, not the more common D model.
The only other one I've seen was Kermit Weeks C model at his Roar n Soar event.
Fond memories of those planes.
My Dad was a radio operator/top turret gunner on B17's, and one uncle was a ball turret gunner in a different squadron. Yet another uncle flew P38 Lightning recon aircraft, while one 1st cousin survived the Bataan death march, and another childhood friend was one of the leading P51 aces in the Pacific in World War II.
That's a lot of distinguished service to their country to come from one little block of Mississippi Street in Monroe, Louisiana.
I'm pretty sure I saw that B17 going "home" yesterday afternoon. I heard, then saw, (through the trees), a loud, slow, prop-driven beast lumbering west.
Great day on Sunday -- great company!
Great pictures as always BlogFather. Sad though when you think about how many of these were scrapped, and how many other warbirds are scrapped. For all the time, they could just have auctioned the things off and made some money back and kept more flying history out there. Glad to see what remains operational though.
Yeah, It's too bad so many were scrapped and so few were preserved. The economy of the time didn't leave a lot of wealth available for buying up airplanes for anything other than scrap. One reason there are still some b-17s around is that some were converted into water bombers for firefighting. This meant there was a demand for parts, and made it more likely that even parts birds might escape the melting furnace. The aircraft for which there was no postwar or civilian use are now the really rare ones.
Yeah. I remember my Grandfather's story telling when he got back from Italy, that the fighters (P51's perhaps? I am not sure what model it was) Selling for 500 bucks at times just to get rid of them and free up space.
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