B-17 Texas Raiders

[Taigh Ramey]

Shameless plug following:

Come on out to Bomber Camp and you can not only crawl through the whole aircraft, B-17G or B-24J (including the tail turret) but you can shoot many WWII guns, get ground training in the ball turret and try it out powered up in flight , transmit and receive over the original radios and even drop bombs with the Norden Bombsight. Not to mention three days of an immersive WWII living history experience.

Stockton Army Air Field, May 30 to June 1st. Check it out on facebook or google bomber camp for photos, videos and more information.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

[phil65]

Please come East of the Mississippi...

Phil

[JohnB]

I walked back and forth through the bomb bay of a B-17 several times in flight and never gave it a thought. I also poked my head out of the top of the radio compartment in flight. Many men flew and died on missions in B-17s before me and I will be damned if I am going to be worried about anything during an enjoyment ride.

Exactly. It was great fun to move around the aircraft, I stuck my hands out of the waist position and got a similar photo from the navigator astrodome.
When I flew in TR, the only place we couldn't go was retail gunner position.

[ignomini]

Rode in the nose on Fifi a couple years ago. $1,500. Would do it again in a heart beat, although the bombardiers seat is the only one from which you are not allowed to get up and move around. That would require stepping over the radios. I can understand why I had to stay put. We didn't fly over, but near the Diablo Canyon power plant. I now have a photo of a nuclear power station taken from the nose of a nuclear bomber. If you care about the money more than the ride, someone else will be happy to take your seat.

[kmiles]

$450 for a half hour flight is still the going price for most of the B-17 flights. Where this price structure is different than most is allowing people to sit in the nose for takeoff and landing, and charging extra for it. The problem that I see with this is that it now prevents the other passengers from visiting the nose if there are 2 people up there that paid extra (almost double) to be there. In my opinion that devalues the rest of the seats as most people want to visit the nose during the flight. Crossing back and forth across the bomb bay on the catwalk has not been a problem in any of the other B-17's offer the flight experiences. In something like the B-29 where moving into the nose could interfere with the flight crew (and understandable why people should not be entering and exiting during the flight), that is not an issue with the B-17 layout. At one point the FAA would not approve a seat for takeoff or landing in the nose because of the added liability if there was a problem on takeoff or landing, but guess at least some FSDO's are ok with it now.

[phil65]

I don't think the seats in the nose couldn't support a 200+ pound person. Never mind no seat belts for takeoff and landing.

I shared my Flight Observer Seat​ in FiFi with the other people, but like has been said; the bombardier had to stay put.

Phil