Flying History...B17 "Flying Fortress"

Here are shots that were taken today while the "Wings of Freedom" tour was at our local airstrip. A B17G (Shown here on this blog) and the only flying B24 in the world (featured in the next blog). Here is a shot from inside the aircraft (B17) looking at where the bombardier would sit (in the nose of the aircraft) while on a mission. Further into the aircraft I crawled. I really mean that I HAD TO CRAWL. I stood up and looked into the cockpit and snapped off a quick shot. I thought flying a small Cessna was hard. Wow, talk about old school. This picture doesn't do it justice to everything that was crammed into that small space.This shot is looking from midway inside where the radioman and the waist gunners would be. The corridor is so narrow and this shot is looking the length of the aircraft all the way to the cockpit up front.Here is a the area where the radioman and navigator would be. Just a small desk with a window. It was up to him to get them there and then get them back. While looking through the aircraft I could only imagine what these men went through. Bullets and flak ripping through the plane. The noise and the extreme cold at that altitude. This aircraft made a lot of bombing runs during WWII as noted buy the decals on the nose. After all that she still flies today. Lets back up just a few feet to where the waist gunners stood. One place I cant forget to mention was the ball turret gunner underneath the aircraft. The turret moved on a rail powered by hydraulics. If the plane suffered damage and the turret could not rotate into the correct position for him to climb out he was stuck until they landed. The bad thing was that if the gear couldn't come down they had land "Belly first", this wasn't good for the turret gunner who would be crushed. I realize I have no shots of the gunner on top of the aircraft. Sorry but i couldn't compose a shot that would really show anything. the tail gunner is the last area shown here.