Airplanes, zooming in and out. Perhaps I've not paid attention in the past, but It seems that we've had an unusual number of airplane-related events going on in Our Fair Town this year. Well, ok, two. There were the barnstormers mentioned previously, and then on Friday, while heading out to the local Indian restaurant for lunch, I looked up towards the horizon and thought to myself, Hey, what's that big four-engined prop plane up there? I assumed it was probably an aerial tanker for fire-fighting, and let it go at that, although a few more seconds of thought would probably have led me to realize that there isn't much call for aerial fire-fighting around these parts.

Saturday afternoon, whilst sitting slack-jawed in front of my computer, I heard a low droning, growing louder and louder, until it finally occurred to me that an unusually large prop plane was nearby. Looking up at the sky, I eventually saw the thing fly right overhead – a B-17, a real, live, flying B-17, guns and all. Some quick Googling turned up the information that it was the Commemorative Air Force's Sentimental Journey, in town for the weekend, offering tours and flights. This wasn't something that Moira or I could pass up.

The offspring could pass it up, however. Moira and I both being of rather geekly persuasion, I personally always have tended to equate intelligence with passionate interest in airplanes, space, submarines, dinosaurs, rocks, etc., and the Ranting Spawn has frequently brought me up short by her singular lack of passionate interest in any of these things (except dinosaurs), despite being pretty darn smart. Anyway, Moira and I continued on alone, and drove out to the airport.

The plane was just sitting there, on the tarmac. It fascinated me that a rare (fewer than 10 flight-worthy B-17's exist today) museum-quality relic like this would be so accessible; just walk up and touch it, pay your $5 and climb up the hatch, unsupervised.

The inside is very cramped, and smells of gasoline and grease, like a car mechanic's repair bay.
This is the view out the nose, past the bombardier's seat. The navigator sits just to the left, where he has a small map table to work at. I assume the machine gun to the left is for the bombardier when he wasn't at his bombing duties; a similar, but asymmetrically-placed gun is on the right side, where the navigator can fire it. I don't know who controlled the two guns in the turret beneath the nose.

Here's the view from the pilot's seat:

(I thought the Boeing logo on the pilot's yoke was a nice touch.)

Just behind the pilot and co-pilot the belts of the top turret's twin machine guns hang down. These were manned by the flight engineer, when he wasn't doing whatever it is flight engineers did, back in the days when planes had flight engineers.

An extremely narrow catwalk, about wide enough for an actual cat, runs down the middle of the bomb bay and provides the only access from the front to the back of the plane. Just behind the bomb bay and catwalk, the radio operator has a relatively spacious compartment, beyond which is the mechanism that runs the ball turret. (Despite the general impression of ball turret gunner as being just about the suckiest job in WWII, their survival rate was apparently relatively high, which I suppose is partial recompense for the horrific unpleasantness of being cooped up in a ball turret for hours on end.)

The gun above is for the left waist gunner; another is set up for the right waist gunner. I hadn't realized that aside from the pilot and co-pilot, everybody on the plane had at least one machine gun to fire; the radio operator's was retracted beneath a plexiglas fairing in the roof, which could be opened if necessary.

This is the top of the ball turret, from inside:
	And this is the open hatch of the ball turret, from outside. The picture makes it look much, much larger than it really is. "Cramped" doesn't begin to describe it. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were running low by this point, and putting its own self-preservation above my photographic wishes, the camera refused to take flash pictures.

And flights? Well, the flights were a wee bit expensive. As in, $425 per person, minimum five passengers expensive. (One of the mechanics said that given the cost of fuel, requiring five passengers allowed them to break even on the flights.) Despite the cost, they had the requisite number of passengers by 11:00am. They started the engines, one at a time.

The engines burn a lot of oil.

After starting each engine in turn, the plane taxied off to the runway, ran through its pre-flight check, and began its takeoff roll.

And then it was off:

Posted by David Fleck at 20 July 2008 02:54 PM