Restored plane takes pilot back in time
By ROBERT WHITE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/29/06
He climbed into the aircraft's small back door. His 82-year-old back and knees made it difficult for him to maneuver through the plane he used to spider through six decades earlier.
When he was only 20, Pete Ebersole's 6-foot-2 frame crouched in the tiny and freezing cockpit of a B-17 Flying Fortress for upwards of nine hours a day.
The Atlanta resident flew 27 missions over the patchwork fields of Germany from 1944 to 1945, most of them in the "Barbara Jane." He would have flown 35 missions to complete his tour, but the war ended first.
This weekend, the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association of America has brought a B-17, "The Aluminum Overcast," into Lawrenceville for public flights and tours. To honor local B-17 veterans, the association asked Ebersole, as well as co-pilot Malcom Magid of Atlanta and tail-gunner Albert McMahan of Norcross, to take a flight in it.
Until Thursday, Ebersole hadn't been in a B-17 since 1945.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was more than a plane — it was truly a fortress, bristling with .50-caliber guns.
"It brought you back home," Ebersole said. "Even if it had all sorts of things missing off of it."
Ebersole remembers signing up to serve, and the recruiter's response: "After graduation, report for duty." He did.
He remembers the year of training in places all over the map — Mississippi, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma. He remembers three months of flying missions from an English airfield over mainland Europe where thousand-strong formations of bombers droned through black clouds of exploding shrapnel — "flak" — and swarms of fighters.
He especially remembers that mission over Berlin.
They'd dropped their bombs and had turned back toward England. As he banked the plane, a burst of flak nearby knocked Ebersole's foot off the rudder peddle. The plane careened toward two other Fortresses nearby, but Ebersole yanked the plane away in time to avoid a mid-air collision.
Later, he realized that what had knocked his foot was not the shock of the explosion, but an actual sliver of flak that hit his boot. Ebersole was not injured but couldn't help but notice that a 2-inch piece of metal nearly led to the destruction of three planes and 30 men.
The harrowing moments, however, were just part of the job. The payback was the joy of flying, and he remembers that most.
"I love the feeling that you're up there, above everything," he said. "That you're free."
For a brief period Thursday, he was free again.
He was a passenger this time, given a seat in the spot reserved for the radio operator. "I wish I could fly it," he said.
Then the big plane's four engines coughed and growled, and the "Aluminum Overcast" shook. It sounded like thunder in a coffin. Ebersole tensed, grabbed the radio operator's table and smiled.
The bomber was aloft within moments, passing over Lake Lanier. He stared motionless out the window, as if the passing landscape were memories rolling by.
The flight lasted 15 minutes. After the plane landed, Ebersole smiled again.
"Yeah, [the pilots] did OK." For someone who never flew through flak or had to fly within a tight formation, his smile seemed to add.
"I sure enjoyed it," he said.
But with Ebersole, every statement flies above a thousand other words.
• The World War II bomber "The Aluminum Overcast" is available for tours and flights today through Sunday. Flights take place 8 a.m.-1:15 p.m., tours take place after. Tours are $6 for adults, $5 for children, and free for veterans and children under 8. Flights cost $399 for reserved seating. The aircraft is at Briscoe County Airport, 770 Airport Road in Lawrenceville.
www.b17.org.
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Good to see she's repaired & back in the air.
Robbie
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