Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Wings of Freedom...

Sunday morning I took TheBoy to see some history. I met up with Yankeefried, Brad_in_MA, and libertyman at Nashua NH airport to take in the "Wings of Freedom" exhibit: A P51 Mustang fighter, a B17 Flying Fortress bomber, and a B24 Liberator bomber. Three vintage WWII fighting aircraft, to drool over gaze in admiration at and explore. Who could resist?

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:

Anonymous said...

You'll find aviation faces the same threats our gun rights do and usually from the same type of people.

Roger said...

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.

Ambulance Driver said...

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.

doubletrouble said...

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.

libertyman said...

Great day on Sunday -- great company!

Jester said...

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.

fast richard said...

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.

Jester said...

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.