At the Palm Springs Air Museum last weekend, there was a modest "airshow" event where the crews of B-17's and B-24's came by to share stories, talk about their experiences, and to show off "Miss Angela", one of the few operational B-17's left in the world. We were fortunate enough to be able to tour around *inside* the legendary bomber, and afterwards were treated watching it fly a couple circuits of the airfield. Since this was a very small show, we had the unusual priviledge of having immediate access to the aircraft and crew the entire time. Following are some pictures from the event. Apologies must be made in advance for the quality of some of the pictures. These were taken with my first outing with a digital camera and many were under rushed conditions.
A mixed presentation of the original crew of "Miss Angela" and some B-24 crewmen. The speaker was a ball-turret gunner, and was explaining the particular problem where it was virtually impossible for the ball gunner to get out without assistance. The following is roughly paraphrased from his story:
"After realizing the situation, I turned to my fellow crewmen and said, 'Guys, we
have got to have a working agreement here. If we go down, someone is going to
have to get me out before anyone jumps. If I see any parachutes coming out of
the plane, so help me I'll shoot you down myself."
(A round of nervous laughter from the audience ensues)
"That's for two very good reasons. One, that's my butt in there, and two, I'm a
good old Southern boy - and you are all a bunch of damn Yankees."
View forward through the nose bubble of the B-17. The Norden bombsight and forward gunnery controls are in the foreground, and a P-38 Lightning and F7F Tigercat are visible in the background through the bubble distortions.
To get to the
cockpit from the front hatch, you have to crawl through a very cramped tunnel that connects the nose and cockpit. Just about everything except the radio equipment is vintage. The bubble on top of the nose there is used for celestial navigation. The crew claims that many B-17's were equipped with such a bubble despite their rarity in Hollywood productions. Directly behind the pilots is the dorsal turret. This is perhaps the least cramped spot in the whole bomber.
This is what the pilots would see if they looked directly aft. First is the narrow catwalk directly over the bomb bay. It isn't big enough to put two feet side by side, really, but
at least there are a couple of metal handhold rails and rubber netting to help keep your
footing on. Behind that the hanging assembly for the ball turret is plainly visible.
One of the two waist gunner positions. The port is "glassed in" now as a creature comfort for the crew, but the gun certainly looks like it wouldn't take much to put into action.
The actual ball turret assembly as viewed from above. It's difficult to imagine just how could the gunner stand the cramped claustrophobic conditions in the ball for extended periods of time, but it's certainly easy to understand how it can be difficult to extract
oneself once inside.
The new crew of Miss Angela starts up "Doc". Yes, all the stories you've heard of how the engines belch great volumes of smoke on startup are true. Miss Angela isn't going to
be collecting any EPA certificates. Note the ground crewman with the fire extinguisher at the ready.
Miss Angela buzzes the field on her second circuit. On the first circuit, the crew landed her and apparently put on the brakes - much to the crowd's disappointment. Just when everyone started to wonder what went wrong and look away, she soared back up again
in a last-minute touch-and-go. One of the crew observers was really surprised, saying that doing a touch-and-go on the B-17 is quite difficult.
The B-17 casts quite an ominous shadow as it lumbers back through the gate after an impressive flight. Miss Angela didn't actually see combat in the war, as she was assigned
to be a general's personal transport. The B-17's were popular as VIP transport because of their great stability and self-defense capability.
Finished with its taxi, the crew runs up the engines for a minute before shutting down to the exuberant applause of the spectators. Actually, the pilot got the tailwheel a little off-road while bringing it around, but it didn't seem to mind at all.
"Doc" in the foreground and "Sleepy" in the background. Each of the engines was curiously named after one of the Seven Dwarves. But these dwarves had terrible table manners. They would drool long strands of oil all over the concrete when they weren't running. One of the pilots recalled their old saying "If it ain't leaking, you better not go flying."
Pacific theater pilot and cohort.
Just as the sun was setting, they rolled out the Tigercat and ran up its engines for about ten minutes. The irony is that the two smaller engines of the Tigercat were much more raucous than the four engines of the B-17. The engines were a lot more temperamental, too.
The Tigercat's engines also blew copious quantities of smoke at each startup. What this picture doesn't show, is how incredibly narrow the fuselage is. In fact, it's much narrower than the engines, and probably rates up there with the HueyCobra in frontal profile that way.
