B-17 Liberty Belle fire & landing in Oswego,Ill, EVERYONE OK

earnie · **Joined:** Fri May 21, 2010 3:23 am **Posts:** 66

Chris Brame wrote:

So lucky they had a flat place to land her wheels-down - thank God everyone's OK. WGN's midday news will be on in a few minutes - will record it. Hope what's left can be saved to help keep some other B-17s flying

Edit: it was the opening story and they did correctly refer to it as an emergency landing rather than a crash.

i really hope that the remains get incorporated into dons other b17=between what is left of belle and the canada lake recovery something good can come of it
indeed a sad day for the b17 community

Air_Force_Vet · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:48 pm

maxum96 wrote:

Nathan wrote:

After seeing video I am a bit pissed off the fire crews did not promptly put out the fire. The video showed they lazily hitting the fire with ONE fire hose. Then stopping to take a break with the fire still going! Jesus! :evil:

Unless you've been trained as a firefighter, I wouldn't criticize the firefighters there. With the multitude of factors they were dealing with (muddy field, large aircraft on fire, and fueled up), there wasn't much they could do. Trust me, firefighters love putting fires out. But sometimes there are fires just too big for their equipment to handle. And unless they were there the minute LB touched down, there was no way they were going to save her no matter what equipment they had.

I don't see a fire hydrant in that there field...

davidbray · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:50 pm

maxum96 wrote:

Nathan wrote:

After seeing video I am a bit pissed off the fire crews did not promptly put out the fire. The video showed they lazily hitting the fire with ONE fire hose. Then stopping to take a break with the fire still going! Jesus! :evil:

Unless you've been trained as a firefighter, I wouldn't criticize the firefighters there. With the multitude of factors they were dealing with (muddy field, large aircraft on fire, and fueled up), there wasn't much they could do. Trust me, firefighters love putting fires out. But sometimes there are fires just too big for their equipment to handle. And unless they were there the minute LB touched down, there was no way they were going to save her no matter what equipment they had.

Also keep in mind the amount of rain that Illinois had the past few days. Those fields are wet. The only vehicle that they were able to get out to the plane was a grass fire pickup from the pictures that I have seen. Those little trucks do a great job on grass fires, but on a B-17 they will be of little use. The goal at that point was to contain the fire to the aircraft.

Remember the most important thing, the 7 people are board are alive today thanks to the amazing work of the escort aircraft, and especially the crew.

earnie · **Joined:** Fri May 21, 2010 3:23 am **Posts:** 66

Warbirdnerd wrote:

the330thbg wrote:

Their site is down.., guess it is not necessary anymore! :cry:

It works from here:
http://www.libertyfoundation.org/index.html

Very sad day indeed. I took my father in law and 4 snot monsters to see her last weekend in St Paul, I was dissapointed the P-40 was not around, but had no idea I would not be seeing the Belle again... The pictures are still on my camera.

site is definatly down, what a shame

CAPFlyer · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:53 pm

Honestly, I expect the website to be down for at least a few days while they get themselves back together after such a devastating loss. This will give them time to not get flooded with contacts by all sorts of idiots out there (and they'll be trying you can be sure) and figure out what the next step is without people hovering over every move more than they are now.

I'm sure we'll see them back up and running once they get a plan together on where to go from here and everything is ready to be shown to the public.

earnie · **Joined:** Fri May 21, 2010 3:23 am **Posts:** 66

sad but at least the belle did her last duty in bringing her boys home safely,i hope don uses whats left to ressurect his other b17

SaxMan · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:02 pm

When I read the news, it felt like a kick to the gut. However, the news that everyone got out safely is definitely the silver lining to this story.

Even though the Liberty Belle had a far shorter lifespan than her other sisters still flying, this airplane had the opportunity to touch thousands of peoples lives. Even in her fiery demise, you can see the way this airplane touched people. Perhaps it will affect people enough to help put one of the other restorations on the "fast track", or maybe a benefactor will step forward to help some of the struggling restorations, or even reconditioning one of the static airplanes, or even an individual to come forward and put their own sweat equity into a restoration.

Air_Force_Vet · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:03 pm

CAPFlyer wrote:

Honestly, I expect the website to be down for at least a few days while they get themselves back together after such a devastating loss. This will give them time to not get flooded with contacts by all sorts of idiots out there (and they'll be trying you can be sure) and figure out what the next step is without people hovering over every move more than they are now.

I'm sure we'll see them back up and running once they get a plan together on where to go from here and everything is ready to be shown to the public.

APG85 · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:16 pm

Heartbreaking...

corsair166b · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:20 pm

Makes that T shirt I bought from the Liberty Belle guys a few years ago all that much more special. Here's hoping I get a chance to buy another one from the same folks in the future. It was great seeing her in Denver a month ago....so unfortunate for the airframe and yet so lucky that all the crew got out and will go home.....

Mark :spit

b29flteng · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:32 pm

Sasnak wrote:

Matt Gunsch wrote:

one of the links had a couple of photos of it in the air with flames visible thru a burn in the wing behind #2, no engine firebottle would put that out. A engine fire is one thing, a fire inside the wing, next to a fuel cell is another...

I saw that too Matt. Photo number 14 at this link: http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2011 ... 15/photos/

Perhaps the left main tire threw something up on takeoff that punctured the fuel cell, the leaking fuel eventually being lit off by the exhaust of #2.

It looks to me as if it was in the area of the #1 tank fuel boost pump (?).

I'm saddened about the plane, but the people are safe. I hope we can learn something from it.

p51 · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:38 pm

bluehawk15 wrote:

I first saw her at Tom's place in Kissimmee as the big parts were being put together. From what I remember, they had to rebuild about 90% of her.

Same here, we saw her being worked on in 2000. At that point, she was going to be “Outhouse Mouse” and I still have the hat pin for the “fortress flight” concept that never came to pass. Saw her in Seattle the last time she was here. I too almost wretched when I saw this, I had no idea before seeing this thread, hoped the title was a joke or a model plane reference. Here’s a shot I found right away, making an “arty” photo of her leaving Boeing Field, now never to return there:

BadgerDave · **Joined:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:10 pm **Posts:** 3

lmritger wrote:

Nathan, as has been said several times above, there's just nothing they could have done. Just a few posts before yours it was pointed out that even if they'd made it back to Aurora, the result would've been the same because Aurora doesn't have the sort of firefighting capabilities needed to put out such a fierce fire.
Lynn

Sugar Grove FD which responded is an ARFF-capable FD; their main station is directly across the street from the airport and they do have crash rescue capabilities. More info here: http://www.sugargrovefire.com/aircraftrescue.html with photos of previous events in the photo gallery. I don't believe Oswego FD has ARFF capabilities; both Oswego and Sugar Grove responded plus any mutual aid that was requested.

I live 15 miles SE of there; they got 2.5" of rain last Thursday alone. I can't imagine trying to get crash trucks into that field, much less getting them out.

FYI,
Dave

DoraNineFan · **Joined:** Fri Aug 12, 2005 3:37 pm **Posts:** 678

Nathan wrote:

After seeing video I am a bit pissed off the fire crews did not promptly put out the fire. The video showed they lazily hitting the fire with ONE fire hose. Then stopping to take a break with the fire still going! Jesus! :evil:

Water isn't exactly effective on aviation fuel or avgas fires. That's why they use foam.

Water will just spread the fire.

Ztex · **Posted:** Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

More photos.. sad day.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... otogallery

In this series you can see that the investigators have pulled the accessory cowl off of number 2. Image 19

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2011 ... 15/photos/

News report...
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?sectio ... id=8187278

No speculation of the current indecent here just a bit information.
I was on board Chuckie in 1987 when we had an "inflight" fire in the accessory area of number 1. It happened right as we were about to touch down. A fuel hose pulled loose right as Doc throttled the engine back. The fire flared the length of the fuselage...I only saw the video of it that day. The onboard extinguishers worked that day. I'm not sure it would have worked had we been really inflight at flying airspeed for very long...I remember discussions about this at the time.
Quite an attention getter.

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B-17 Liberty Belle fire & landing in Oswego,Ill, EVERYONE OK

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