B-17

Richard got to ride a B-17 on friday! Normally it is about $500 to ride for half an hour, but because he agreed to learn about the plane and answer peoples questions at the show he got to ride from New Mexico to Scottsdale (2 hour ride) for free!



This plane was actually built at the end of the war, so it never saw combat. It was used to patrol over the Pacific, and also as a water bomber. It was then covered in instrumentation and subjected to 3 nuclear bomb blasts to test the effects. After 11 years to 'cool off ' it was rebuilt to flying status and repainted as Nine-0-Nine, the most successful B-17 in the war. It completed 140 missions, dropping 500,000 pounds of bombs, and never was shot down or suffered a casualty of any of its crew.



These are the pilots. The instrumentation is nowhere near what we have today, even in a small simple plane. Also the bomb bay, which holds bombs, or T-shirts and other stuff we sold and cones to rope off the plane.



Here is the strut for the tail wheel. It was bigger around than my thigh! The other is the radio room. I spent part of the flight in this room making contributions to barf bags and throwing them out the window in the top of the plane. haha



Lavish accommodations in the back for passengers. You sit on the floor with a little pad. When they would come under fire and let loose on their 50 caliber guns (13 of them on the plane) the back would fill up with empty shells to the point they would have a hard time walking around.



Richard sitting in the bombers seat. The controls to his right control the nose guns and swing out of the way for the bomb sight. As you can see from the other picture you are hanging out over the plexiglass nose. It is a funny feeling just hanging out there.



The flight was awesome and I have some neat video. I will upload it as soon as I can get blogger to cooperate!