Warbird Information Exchange

A guy in my squadron recently made a low pass over the base before departing for the desert. I saw it with my own eyes. I'm pretty easy going, but I agreed that it was a bit much and a breach of flight safety, especially because it was near max gross weight and below our training altitudes. During the investigation, the commanding General had some words with him. The pilot professed that he did it for his family - the General said that the pilot broke the rules and common sense not for his family, but because he was selfish. I'm rarely on the side of the brass, but the General was right.

Cranking the Belle is also selfish. Brand me a stick in the mud, but cranking her is a pure mistake. The systems won't be preserved as they're assembled by the technicians in the same way as if a run was not in the cards. After the run, you'll never clean the exhaust residue, oil, fuel, and other lubricants well enough (compared to no engine run) - it just subjects her to the prep, the run, and the additional chemicals for cleaning. The seams and joints where the cleaner either can't go or subsequently drain will suffer. And no matter how good folks say that oil and residue is "preservative", we know it's wordplay considering the long-term goal of a museum like NMUSAF.

Because she won't fly again, restore and preserve her as best as is possible and leave her be. What's best for the machine beats what's best for man. Having other B-17s fly-by to help celebrate the completion of this great restoration is a fab idea.

If the goal is preserving her for many generations to come, then running her doesn't contribute to that one bit - it's a distraction. You can argue that it enhances her display by showing a video of the run to everyone for the next 200 years. That's no different than us looking back at her running and flying in wartime footage.

If we really cared about the machine and the overall goal, we'd skip it.

Ken

at the cost of mere millions

If the goal is preserving her for many generations to come, then running her doesn't contribute to that one bit -
Ken

Is it me, or do B-17's just have a smell like no other?

I can't speak for *all* B17's as I've only been in 7 or 8 of them, but I do know "The Movie Belle" smelled like KFC, McD's & a half dozen other fastfood outlets when it landed at Dx to take part in filming about 20 years ago... I think they must have taken off with fastfood on board at every stop on the way to the UK, unless they had a total pig out when they cleared UK Customs...

Yes it does, if they don't run MB then it won't smell right. Freshly restored birds ALWAYS smell better after the first run, before that they don't really smell like an aircraft.
JCs F7F has been in the US for quite a while & it still smells EXACTLY like Hangar 2 at Dx. It doesn't smell like any of the other birds I've wrenched on at VN, even the others there with 2 R2800's hung on em.
MB needs to be run to get it's stink on, then they can park it.

I mean, surely we wouldn't want to embed the smell of Ohio in her!

I mean, surely we wouldn't want to embed the smell of Ohio in her!



August