C170BDan wrote:
Friend of mine sent this to me to post. This was taken on May 1st - the day it was test flown after being down for awhile.
I missed seeing her at the Denton airshow but heard she was there.
WOW! Thank you guys! You made my year!
My first flight in a B-17 was interesting. Like any old DC-3, when you enter the back door of a 17 you have got to climb up-hill. I went to the radio compartment where a nice breeze was coming from the open bomb bay doors.
There was no bomb load so I could see into the cockpit to view the pilot's hands playing with various knobs. A gear started moving in the bomb bay and the doors closed. Another guy came in and sat across from me.
The loud whine told me that an engine was starting. I wasn't prepared for the airplane to shake so much. After the third engine started, I couldn't hear the fourth. The B-17 engines are that loud.
We began to move while the pilot had his hands cupped around the rungs of a ladder affair in the center console. Another hand appeared from the right to play with four sliding items just below the pilot's hand.
The wait was brief at the end of the runway this sunny Sunday. The engine noise increased and we began to roll. The tail came up and seconds later we were off. No, there was no "seat belt" sign or stewardess with drinks.
The other guy and I just looked out our respective tiny windows across the big wide wings. He yelled to me, "Is this supposed to do that?" Like a monkey swinging from tree to tree -as I grabbed each support spot to keep from falling, I went over to where he was . Looking out his tiny window I noticed a small trickle of clear liquid coming back from the #2 engine. "No" I said, "but if it gets any worse let me know" and in less than two miniutes it was. This time a stream of heavy black oil was pouring out halfway across the wing and a foot wide. The crew chief saw it, went forward screaming for attention, with his one hand cutting his neck and raising two fingers of his other.
As we were coming back toward the airfield with our dead engine, and it is quite unnerving to see that prop feathered, my mind went into overload...
Belly landing...
Crash....
Lots more!
I could just see the airfield under attack, bombs exploding next to the runway. Just level with us and coming across our bow ...I screamed, "Fighters, 11 o'clock" toward the guys at the waist gun positions. I moved to the radio gun position to get a better look. Yes, they were Zeros. Again I yelled back toward the waist, "They're coming in level along the port side...look out, there is one at 7 o'clock coming in for a strafing attack!"
The guys at the waist gun positions turned and aimed their television cameras just as my mind went back in time!
The Zero that was making the mock strafing run was one of several I had provided the paint scheme. It was in the markings of a Zero that strafed Lt Ray Swenson's B-17 on 7 Dec 1941, hitting it in the radio compartment starting the flares burning. I had interviewed two of Swenson's crew whom had been in that radio compartment ...this VERY Zero ...was "strafing" at ME, standing in the radio compartment! The hairs on my neck stood on end.
That Confederate Air Force airshow at Denton, Texas, was too real for me. The dead engine on CHUCKIE was real, but -to me- the strafing attack was MORE real.
Cheers,
David Aiken
a Director
Pearl Harbor History Associates, Inc.
http://www.pearlharbor-history.org/
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