Bombers bring back memories
By J.D. BRUEWER
The Lima News
For being 53 years old, the Collings Foundation’s B-17 Bomber, the Nine-O-Nine, is in great shape.
On a flight from Bryan to Lima on Thursday, the Nine-O-Nine was flawless. She came to town for a three-day visit at the Allen County Airport, along with the Collings Foundation’s B-24, The All American.
The Nine-O-Nine is one of a handful of B-17’s still flying. Named for a bomber that flew 140 missions over Germany during World War II, this B-17 never saw action. It was built in 1945, too late for combat. It spent seven years as a rescue and test plane, 13 years in storage and 20 years as a fire-fighting water bomber. Restored to wartime configuration in 1986, it was damaged in a crash in 1987 and restored again.
“It’s a traveling museum,” said Rob Collings of the Collings Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Stow, Mass., that seeks to preserve working pieces of aviation history. “It gives a better idea of what those young boys went through (in World War II). It’s really amazing.”
As the engines roared to life Thursday for the trip to Lima, the plane seemed almost new. Despite the rumbling of four 1200-horsepower radial engines, nothing rattled or creaked as the B-17 started to move. To the passengers sitting in the belly of the plane, those noises were conspicuous in their absence. The only noise from inside the plane was the whine of electric motors moving flaps into place for takeoff.
The plane is so solid that the passengers in the windowless communications area weren’t sure it was moving until it tilted gently forward as it left the runway. The only clue to activity was the movement of control cables that ran, exposed, along the roof of the plane’s interior.
After takeoff, passengers could move about. Standing up in the communications area, one could see out the opened overhead hatch and watch the airport slip away as the plane turned to the southeast toward Lima. Passengers were invited to move to the front of the plane.
Walking on a half-foot wide strip of steel between the bomb bay doors, one could feel a draft as the air whipped underneath at more than 200 miles per hour. Only swaying rope railings provided support as passengers walked.
Space was tight as they walked and crawled behind and under the cockpit and into the nose cone. Those with camera gear or extra weight had to position themselves carefully to keep from getting caught in a tight spot.
“They picked the small ones,” said Orville Walls, a former B-24 tail gunner who rode to Lima in the Collings Foundation’s B-24. It was his first time in a B-24 in 53 years.
“It was really great,” he said. “It was a little harder getting in.”
Walls was even able to visit his old position in the tail of the plane. “Everything was right where I remembered it,” he said.
As he looked at the B-24 taking off for a short trip around Bryan before he boarded the plane, he remarked on its dependability. “We got shot a couple of times, and it still brought me back,” he said. His plane once returned from a bombing run near Berlin with 196 bullet holes.
Walls remembers the 26 missions he flew between D-Day and the end of the war, spending five to eight hours at 24,000 feet where the temperature was well below zero. A lot of men endured those conditions, including actor Jimmy Stewart, who commanded one of Walls’ B-24 missions.
Walls said Stewart was a “real square guy. He was doing his job like the rest of us,” he said as the B-24 rolled down the runway. It lived up to its reputation as the “Lumbering Liberator,” sounding much like a tractor-trailer on a mountain highway as it rumbled off into the distance.
Later, aboard the B-17, passengers could get a feel for what it was like on a bombing run over Germany or France. A patchwork of farm fields stretched endlessly in all directions. About 25 minutes after takeoff, the plane banked to the left and when it leveled off the Allen County Airport was spread out ahead. The bomber made one pass over the waiting crowd surrounding the B-24 which had already landed. The passengers moved back to the radio area to strap in for landing.
They were still passing around chewing gum to help with the pressure change when the plane touched down with a gentle bump. When it taxied to a stop, the Nine-O-Nine began to shudder as the tempo of the engines changed. A vibration throbbed slower and slower through the body of the plane until the engines were shut off.
As they stepped off the plane, the passengers were excited about the joy ride they just took. Dick Dinning, a Collings Foundation member who flew B-17s in the war, said it was a lot different when flack and fighter planes were trying to knock him out of the sky. On a bombing run, the planes couldn’t deviate from their course no matter what defense was put in front of them.
“You’d just curl your toes,” he said.
On the ground, pilot Steve Rabb, whose day job is flying 747’s for Northwest Airlines, remarked about the stability of the 36,135-pound plane. He also commented on the bravery of the boys just out of high school who flew the plane at much higher altitudes, in much colder temperatures, for much greater stakes in World War II.
Referring to the flights he makes to show off the plane, Rabb said, “We’re doing the gravy stuff.”
INFORMATION The B-17 Nine-O-Nine and the B-24 The All American will be on display at the Allen County Airport until 6:30 p.m. today and from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Tours of the two planes are $7. Rides on the planes cost $300 and can be arranged by calling Dee Brush at 1-888-210-1708.