Warbird Information Exchange

Because of a series of incidents here in the states while training (in multi-engine ac), including one where a panicked airman tried to forcefully take another crewmember's parachute when he could not find his own, personnel in training in mutli engine ac were told by officers in the training command to take their parachutes with them whenever and where ever they moved about the aircraft. (Both of the airmen described in the parachute conflict above survived.)

Incidentally, color film of B-17s in spins can be found on William Wyler's famous Documentary "MEMPHIS BELLE".

TM

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"Welcome back Mr. Lasky."

I used to fly with a guy in the USAF who had flown B-17/B-24s at Harlingen training gunners in WW II. They would take several students on each flight and they would all wear harnesses for chestpack chutes. The chest packs were kept out of the way on shelves in the compartment where the gunners were training. He would brief the Instructor gunners before the flight what to expect. Then sometime during the training session he would rock and roll the aircraft around as if it was out of control and ring the prepare to bailout signal. The students all ran and lined up at their bailout exits but hardly ever did any of them remember to grab a chest pack. They probably never made that mistake again since it seemed to scare them really well.

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It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

you're too busy hanging on to get scared. The scared comes after you land.

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

Years ago, actually now that I think about it, over 2 decades ago, I was doing research in either the Bundesarchiv in Bonn or the military archive in Koblentz. They had a small film that was recovered from a downed USAAF or RAF bomber that had a combat cameraman aboard. Looked more like the inside of a B-17. However, it had been hit and was going down in a spin. Unfortunately, the camera was on, bouncing around and then became stationary and you could see aircrew pinned to the sides/floor/ceiling of the A/C. Not pretty.

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Cheers!

Lance Jones