I guess the 18 year old crew members had plenty of faith in their 19 year old pilot! Neat stuff and apart from the getting shot at and all the nasty bits I'm quite jealous I'll never get the chance to fly those aircraft...

When I flew the B17's with Globe Air out of Mesa... The captain impressed firmly upon me the lack of roll rate. We were down at 75 feet agl much of the time on spray runs with three ships in formation. Pitching up was quick enough... but if you got a wing down, and then discovered a hill or obstacle down track, you had to roll hard right away. It was painfully slow to respond to aileron inputs.
That and being very very loud inside are my biggest take away memories. It was fun to taxi into airports for fuel though. You could just about count on a guy showing up within 45 minutes with a misty look in his eyes. The real deal. They had seen tough times in those birds in Europe and got home mostly due to the sturdy nature of the machine. I felt like a cheater, since I was just driving it for a buck.

Well yes... gentlemen... but if you will forgive me for spoiling your daydream those are Japanese "Betty" bombers not B-17's.

By the way, a friend of mine just returned from the South Pacific, where he acquired ownership of the only mostly intact, complete, and restorable (to display status) Betty bomber in existence.

If anyone on BCP knows anyone interested in buying this priceless relic, contact me via PM. This is the rarest and most historically significant of any WW2 aircraft discovery. The Betty was the major offensive weapon, or a major WW2 participant, and there are NO complete, intact examples in any museum.

Hey Bill, you got sharp eyes. I gotta learn to pick up my glasses when I look at old B/W snapshots....

Bill, is this Yamamoto's Betty? I know people hike in to look at it now and then.

Just like the guys in Operation Tidal Wave, the low level bombing of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania on August 1, 1943...

BRD wrote:Bill, is this Yamamoto's Betty? I know people hike in to look at it now and then.

No, this is another one that is complete and not smashed into bits. The guy I mentioned has also been to the Yamamoto airplane wreck.