Anyway, he used aircraft grade Baltic birch plywood, vertical grained spruce for the stringers, waterproof two part adhesive, and planned on covering all the wing surfaces with cloth and treating the cloth with cellulose nitrate dope, WWI era style.
He documented his work as he went along and sure enough got accepted into a fine university. He never did finish the plane, and when I asked if he was ever going to fly it he said "Hell no, Lilienthal died flying his!"
So he stowed the pieces parts in the attic and once he went off to school I snagged the tail section and installed it on our Radio Flyer.
But that's not what I am here to talk about today. You know how I do. I was out walking the dogs Friday and I heard the unmistakable deep roar of four radial engines approaching overhead. Wha? You don't hear four engine prop planes every day, so naturally I was enthralled by the approaching aircraft. Not being my brother, and having never bothered to learn one airplane from another because I could rely on his encyclopedic knowledge (well, that's not strictly true, a DC-3 is readily identifiable) I just kind of stood there in awe and wonder as this massive bomber lumbered overhead. The thing was huge. I tried to pick out a detail that would allow me to identify it later and I settled on the vertical stabilizer. Very distinctive shape, it was.
I took some pictures, none of them very good, and started doing some research. I posted my lousy pictures on social media and got some feedback. That allowed me to do further research. Saturday dawned and I kept hearing that same plane. Every time I heard it coming I went outside and took more pictures, which I also posted.
At this point I positively identified the aircraft as a B-17, AKA The Flying Fortress. Friends helped me pin down why it was here and what it was doing, and now I know it is a B-17G, Serial # 44-83575. You can look it up if you want to know more.
In any case, it has moved on to its next barn-storming tour stop and I am thankful I got to see it.
At this point I should post something like "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" but that's been done. How about something different. How about something featuring a baritone sax, which my niece, daughter of the brother in question plays. LINK
19 comments:
That's funny because b-17 is one of the most heavily produced aircraft of all time. Nearly 13,000 by the end of WWII.
Barry carried a pocket booklet with the silhouettes of all planes, bottom, front, sides, with stats.I studied it because it was his and I followed everything that he did. Everything. Such an annoying little dummkopf I was, but he did blaze the trail of life for me, and this airplane book was one. (I read his Boy Scout manuals, his merit badge booklets, and every book that he read.) Both he and I could have identified it by the picture you're showing here. I bet.
I double dog bet.
You saw 1 of 10 still flying.
I think most aircraft had some identifiable sound, particularly all the WWII ones.
I know I read somewhere people could tell a Zero from a P-38, etc., just by the sound.
Well, a single engine aircraft can always be distinguished from a twin engine. Radial engines versus the Allison V-12 used in the Mustang for example, once again, easy, even for someone as deaf as I am.
I was at an air show, and its not difficult to tell one engine sound from another most of the time. A zero is different than a Hellcat which is different from a P-51.
However, once you get to similar planes like a P-51 or Me-109 which both have liquid cooled engines of almost the same size, well...
BTW, its surprisingly cramp inside a B-17.
Liliental
/pedantry
They were machines built for a mission.
The reason 44-83575 kept flying over my house was because the owner was selling rides. For 500 bucks or so you could ride in the back. Six bills got you a ride in the co-pilot's seat or out in the nose gunner's plexi bubble. Talk about being the first on the scene of the accident! Hoowee!
The B-17 flew over my house once long ago, when I was scything the yard.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Randall Jarrell. Published in 1945. Highly anthologized.
I first read that poem in high school, early 70's, introduced to it on a purple mimeographed collection of poems the English teacher put together. I haven't forgotten the jolt I felt then or the accompanying jolt years later upon seeing one of those turrets up close.
When I was a little bitty baby and my mama rocked me in the cradle in those o...
Wait, that isn't it. I was walking around by myself. Ditched by my brother but too dumb to know that. The grass was bright green, and I mean bright, and the sky was bright blue and I mean bright. It was a bright morning, and I found a dead bird.
How fantastic is that?
Because now I'm sooooo close to those impossible strange things that never let you near them.
A shadow raced across the ground over my own and the sound of engines caused me to look upward to squadron of odd airplanes with one fuselage and two tail sections. And there were a bunch of them. The following days I saw even more. They were a thing. Those airplanes ruled! I had no idea what they were for or why they always flew the same direction. Are we having a war, or what? I didn't know my dad was in the military and I had no idea I lived near the airbase. All that I knew was the dead black bird wouldn't be good for anything. No useful feathers, no useful beak or legs. The wings are an awful mess. No possible toy. And ew, was it ever gross. It could only be touched with a stick.
P-38's it turns out.
And that's why those weird planes are my favorite.
Here's what happened a few hours ago. Only vaguely related to airplanes.
I walked out the front door and could not avoid noticing three large boxes from Amazon to two residents here.
The delivery person, most likely Amazon itself, just left them there.
I noted the apartment numbers and went on my way.
Upon returning, the boxes were still there.
With all the in and out and with all the casual thievery they won't stay there long and the only way the addressees will know is if they go out the front door and see them. And that is unlikely as not.
So I went to the apartments and knocked on their doors to tell them they have a package downstairs.
But one apartment I said, "Hello, I'm your neighbor and I came to tell you ...
She didn't speak English. She freaked. And moved to dismiss me and shut the door on me so I switched to Spanish. And I really had to put on my thinking cap because I was not ready for this. I had to think how I'm going to say this, what arrangement to use, then think up the words that I know to match it. At each sentence she nodded comprehension. Like, got it, got, got it, got it. So all those words worked! It's wrong. Grammatically in error, but it worked.
Una compañía se llama Amazon.
Degar una paquete por ustedes.
Está abajo.
En la frente.
That, with sign language. Down there. In the front. So she knows I'm not talking about somebody's forehead.
Success!
Then ... nothing.
She doesn't give a shit about an Amazon packaged addressed to her apartment.
The other addressee wasn't home.
So I did my f'k'n duty to humanity. If Amazon gets grief over this then they deserve it.
And I did NOT think, "what the f you doing here in my country?" Wait, maybe I did. Or else how could I say it?
Who even doesn't speak English? Gawl. That is like so last century.
I know a plane is a C-130 long before it get close enough to see. Man, I loved jumping out of those planes.
You are the man, and that is yet another classic airplane. Four turboprops for the win!
Great post and love the photo of young Sixty. I've told this story previously but bears repeating.
On 9/10/01, the day before infamy, we took our kids and in-laws to the airport in Madison. They had a B-17 plane that flew in for tours. My father-in-law flew over 30 missions over Europe, mostly Germany. Like so many of that great generation, Fred spoke little about the war. However, I am a person who listens well and who people tell their lives stories. He had told me of some horrible missions where most of the squadron did not return.
As we toured this claustrophobic plane Fred had real melancholy on his face and body. He touched different parts of the cockpit. He and I were together, the rest were on there own. We exited the plane to look at the exterior, including the ball turret. With moist eyes Fred told me on a real bad mission he limped home. When they landed they saw the turret and gunner were gone.
I should have mentioned that the child in the picture of our winged chariot is my younger brother, he is still extant, but the point of the story might have been "I'm not getting into that rig!"
However, if he allows me to talk him into some other misadventure I might yet achieve my long-held dream of being an only child.
Spins, was the B-17 you saw named "Nine O Nine"?
Thanks for sharing that story - that had to have been difficult for your father-in-law. I can't imagine how tough a person has to be to get back into an airplane knowing that it might be your last flight. Kudos to him.
Thanks for your memories, Sixty. My two kids would put their old infants' car seat on a wagon, and one would don a motorcycle helmet, and one would pull the other, taking turns.
Allen, one thing I will never do is jump from a perfectly good plane:) Thanks for what you did.
Nick, I recently listened to the first half of Catch-22 on youtube. The bombing-run passages are amazing.
Sixty, I don't know if it was a 909? He flew missions in 1944-45. Fred undoubtedly had PTSD but just toughed through it, like those guys just did.
Unfortunately, those who toughed it through PTSD following horrificly specific or relentlessly intense or ongoing WW2 experiences, didn't do so without cost down the road to themselves, their spouses, and their children.
Numbing, compartmentalizing, clamping down, dissociating or turning to "ism" behavior (including the workaholism that generation is known for) may be how many coped to "survive", however doing so included physical and relational consequences.
A good book focused on PTSD, using research started with Viet Vets: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508784378&sr=8-1&keywords=the+body+keeps+the+score
The SonsM outgrew their 80's style infant car seat long before they were strong enough to pull each other around in the red metal wagon we bought for them after envisioning it as a childhood staple. Unfortunately, the wagon took up a lot of room in the garage for as little use as they got out of it, and we ended up selling it in a garage sale to another 50's raised parent who thought their kids needed a wagon.
The picture in the post brings back a wave of sadness and nostalgia over what was and wasn't present during the Radio Flyer years, along with an acknowledgment of the type of imagination and pretend play that took place then when there was little else to do.
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