Some opportunities should not be missed!

About ten days ago, I was rattling away on my laptop when I heard the unmistakable drone of four large radial engines approach. More specifically, the sound of four turbocharged Wright Cyclone R-1820’s driving eleven-and-one-half foot diameter three-bladed Hamilton Standard constant speed, variable pitch propellers.

Some sounds you never forget. This is one of them.

I had enough time to react by grabbing my camera and was rewarded with a fair image of the Commemorative Air Force’s Boeing B-17G ‘Flying Fortress’ Sentimental Journey as it passed over my house at maybe about eight hundred feet Above Ground Level (AGL). I snapped another as it departed to the northwest, the first two images of what would soon be almost one hundred twenty pictures.

The first time I toured Sentimental Journey, it was midsummer in, I think, 1990. I’d been fascinated with aircraft for as long as I could remember, and especially by the B-17 and other US Army Air Force bombers since I was six or seven.

If I had to assign a source of inspiration to it, I’d say it must have been seeing William Wyler’s documentary about the alleged story of the Memphis Belle, a B-17F assigned to the 324th squadron of the 91st Bomb Group in England. It was featured one Saturday afternoon on Iowa Public Television when I was in perhaps the first grade. Which wing and division the 91st was a subordinate unit of escapes me right now, but the Belle was commonly, if incorrectly, believed by most to be the first 8th Air Force bomber to complete 25 missions and return to the US from England at a time when the average B-17 and its crew survived only eight missions before flugabwerkanone anti-aircraft artillery fire or intercepting Messerschmitt 109 fighter planes did them in.

A few years before I scrutinized Sentimental Journey, I’d built Revell’s old 1/72 scale B-17F kit, a crude rendering that had been billed as an ‘E’ model, yet depicting the Memphis Belle, which was an early (production Block 10, if I recall) ‘F’ model in reality. The rivets were grossly oversized, the clear styrene parts meant to represent the Perspex windows and thermoformed ‘bubbles’ for the bombardier and flight engineer (who defended the plane from a rotating turret equipped with twin .50 caliber machine guns while over enemy territory) were extraordinarily thick and wavy, and the overall shape of the replica just didn’t look right. It didn’t matter, though, it still fascinated me all the same.

I thoroughly enjoyed the old Matchbox 1/72 scale kit, too, which I built into an early ‘G’ model, of one of the very early production blocks that did not feature the ‘Cheyenne’ tail position.

The Cheyenne modification gave the tail gunner more room in addition to a slightly refined gun arrangement and a more sophisticated ‘reflector’ gunsight in place of a bead and ring. The ‘G’ model offered more user-friendly and generally more effective turrets and positions for the defensive gunners to shoot back at fighter planes from, but there’s no free lunch; the more streamlined ‘F’ model could reach a top speed almost 25 mph faster than the 302 mph the ‘G’ was said to be capable of, though I think both cruised at about 160 mph. The ‘F’ was still rated for a somewhat higher service ceiling, by a couple thousand feet, again not a big deal since either way that maximum altitude was almost two miles higher than strategic bombing could effectively be preformed from at the time, which was about 25,000 feet. That the ‘F’ was rated for an additional 650 miles of maximum range might have meant more in reality. Still, the revisions introduced in the late ‘F’ models generally remained in place throughout the production of most of the 8,680 ‘G’s built between late 1942 and late 1944 by Boeing and two subcontractors, Douglas and Lockheed/Vega.

The Matchbox kit didn’t feature any visible rivets, and some time later I came to realize that in a scale where a six foot tall man would be one inch in height, no visible rivets was a more accurate representation! What really perplexed me was the differences between the interior features and overall design of the kits.

Matchbox designed their replica in sections, which I later learned more or less mirrored the way the B-17 was designed and manufactured. This is why it offered the option of tail positions; the tail section was a separate assembly on the real thing, built on a jig and joined to the rest of the fuselage upon final aircraft assembly. The Matchbox kit also had turrets that actually looked like those featured on a B-17G, whereas the Revell kit apparently was designed with a ‘high speed, low drag’ look in mind with very minimized turrets for the flight engineer and ball turret gunner.

Neither kit had interior details anything close to what was featured in the real aircraft, though, and that was what astounded me when I was blessed to tour Sentimental Journey around the time of my fourteenth birthday.

Today I got an email from someone I know well asking me if I was aware that Sentimental Journey would be stopping in Fort Dodge, Iowa. I’m wondering if he realized that it had just spent most of a week in Mason City, Iowa, where I live…

Still, it was very thoughtful for him to drop me a line and let me know.

If you, or anyone you know, enjoy vintage aircraft or history, American or otherwise, I’ve got one thing to tell you:

IF YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE AN OLD AIRPLANE AT AN AIRSHOW OR JUST AT YOUR LOCAL AIRPORT, GET OUT THERE AND SEE IT NOW!!!

Truth of the matter is that you may not get the opportunity to do so again.

In this example, the Commemorative Air Force (formerly the Confederate Air Force) puts Sentimental Journey on tour every summer. Eighteen years passed from the first opportunity I had to see it and now.

Where will we be in another 18 years, in the summer of 2026?

A B-17 is fitted with R-1820 engines of varying marques. One thousand eight hundred twenty cubic inches of swept displacement equals a volume of almost 30 liters, or ten times the size of today’s average car engines! Now, this is just one of the four engines a B-17 has we’re talking about here. Total swept displacement for all four engines would be 7,280 cubic inches, or nearly 120 liters! That’s forty times as much engine as my 3.0L Ford Taurus has!

I’m told a ‘Flying Fortress’ consumes roughly one gallon of fuel per every three miles it travels at cruising speed and altitude, which actually strikes me as being pretty good. If my Taurus gets 28 miles per gallon on the highway, forty times more fuel consumption would be .7 miles per gallon. Knowing how averages work, I’ll bet the B-17 slurps considerably more ‘go-juice’ than that during take-off and climb-out!

I know that 100 octane Low Lead Avgas passed the $5 dollar per gallon rate some time ago, though I don’t know exactly where it rests now – just that one of the major oil companies says Avgas sales track almost exactly with 93 octane premium unleaded automotive gasoline. Figure that Avgas is six dollars a gallon now -or ask someone who knows, like a current pilot- and compute what it costs to fill up the twenty four fuel tanks in the wings of a B-17. That’s right, twenty four! Each wing has three main tanks in the inboard wing section, and nine smaller ones in the outboard section, beyond the engine nacelles. Combined, they have a total capacity of 2,780 gallons. You could buy a new car for the money it takes to fill up a B-17G up for approximately 3,750 miles of flying. Those numbers would make for a combined mileage of 1.35 miles per gallon!

How much do you think Avgas will cost next year? Or five years from now? Or in 2026?

If I heard right, Sentimental Journey was ‘restored’ -whatever that means in this case- in the mid-1970’s and certified as airworthy in 1978, thirty four years after she was built. Our lady is rapidly approaching seventy years of age!

I gather that the Confederate/Commemorative Air Force had a pretty good B-17G to start with, which never actually saw combat, avoided the smelter’s furnace at Kingman, Arizona after the war, and must have enjoyed a relatively pampered existence after that. I don’t know what all had to be done during its ‘restoration’, but I suspect it was nowhere near as much time, effort, and expense that later warbird restoration projects took. 'Reconditioned' or 'freshened up' may be more apt than 'restored', but I'd sure like to ask someone who really knows!

Extensive work probably wouldn’t have been viable in the seventies as a number of parts needed weren’t available at the time, especially consumables and doubly so for anything with a limited ‘shelf life’. I know that the 20-ply, 56” tires for a B-17 were not manufactured for many years, but more recently Dunlop in England started to make a few. Plexiglas does not age well, yellowing and cracking in ultraviolet light. In the last twenty-five years, someone has begun to custom form nose bubbles and turret panels as needed once it was evident that there was a market for that kind of thing again. The important issue is that there was a period of time where production of B-17 parts had long ceased, but anyone who still had an inventory of them hadn't gotten around to 'cleaning house' yet. Governments tend to be like that!

In a very similar scenario, supplies of WWII rifles and ammunition did significantly dwindle in this country at one point. The Army had hung onto a surprising number of M1 Garands, M1903 Springfields, and M1 carbines, but the vast majority had been transferred to allied nations, sold through the National Rifle Association and the Civilian Marskmanship Program, or scrapped and/or parted out when worn to the point of no longer being reliable enough to store away for reissue should a national emergency require all usable weapons to be pressed into service. Don't laugh! M-14 rifles that haven't seen the light of day since 1970 or so have been pulled out of Army depots and sent to Iraq and Afghanistan where they're proving more effective than the M16A2 rifle or the M4 carbine in long range applications. I see surplus go on the market all the time that has not been issued in twenty years or more. Some of the foreign countries are noted for hanging on to some items for fifty years or more before they let go of them!

As time went on, things began to be discovered in odd places, mostly in dark, cobweb-filled corners of old warehouses. Stashes of parts and accessories that were never delivered before the war ended turned up. Allied nations that we’d sold some of this stuff to suddenly remembered that they still had a lot of it tucked away, somewhere. State National Guards finally returned the antiquated weapons loaned to them by the Army years before. Suddenly, U.S. built and issued M1 rifles and carbines, among others, started to be re-imported from Korea, Greece, and other nations, at least until the BATFE inspectors decided they didn’t like it and started clamping down on it. As supplies of old parts surfaced, small companies began to assemble them onto newly manufactured receivers, and before we knew it, classic American service rifles were available in large numbers again.

It has been much the same way with WWII and cold war era aircraft. Airframes the U.S. government sold or gave to other governments in the late 40’s have been discovered in ‘relic’ condition in various countries, such as India, and have become the foundation for restoration projects of the 1990’s and today. I’m sure spare parts for these planes have also been, or are perhaps still waiting to be, discovered tucked away in old military depots in those same nations.

This is fine and well, but if it costs too much to operate the aircraft, a lot of this is moot. An aircraft on static display doesn’t need most of the parts that can’t be seen by the casual observer, and a good many that will never fly again sit pretty in museums but are devoid of most internal components. Admittedly, they are easier to hang from the ceiling if they weigh less...

Static display is certainly better than having no remaining specimens. However, you cannot truly experience an aircraft on static display as it is inanimate. Real aircraft move and make noise! Those on static display do not fly into your local airport, either.

To see Sentimental Journey on static display during the winter, or if she should ever be grounded permanently (which WILL happen someday if she survives long enough), one has to drive to Mesa, Arizona. That’s not a short trip from where I live in north Iowa! Presuming that the price of fuel will generally increase as the years go on, cost alone is a major deterrent to driving to aviation museums scattered around the country, too.

Eventually, even if fuel expense doesn’t make touring of the few remaining airworthy B-17’s totally impractical, lack of usable parts will. The planes can fly as long as they can pass inspections.

If the appropriate spare parts are available, the plane can be made to pass inspection should it eventually fail to do so.

But what if you can’t get the parts? Some critical items are not very easy to manufacture, partly because they’ve got to be absolutely, correctly built to very high standards, and partly because some things require specialized tooling, jigs, or other manufacturing accommodations which will cost much more than the parts produced will unless high production volume can offset that overhead cost. With just a small handful of B-17’s still flying, ‘high production volume’ just isn’t going to happen. That goes for many other vintage aircraft types, too.

If a part can be hand-built in a machine shop, that might be the only way to go. It’s possible, however, that some forgings are just too large to be ‘prototyped’ from scratch and must be replaced with another serviceable old part should one prove defective or worn to the end of its useful life. What I’m thinking of specifically would be landing gear components, wheels, possibly wing spars, definitely engine connecting rods and crankshafts, etc. Large government contracts funded the production of the originals in factories with monster sized forging presses that could exert tens of thousands of tons of pressure to shape a part from hot steel or aluminum alloy.

When the supply of those originals is gone, it’s very unlikely that anyone else will be able or willing to cough up the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars required to produce even a few more! Even worse, a good number of the originals left may not be usable, either in fact or in principle.

If poor storage has resulted in corrosion, a critical part will certainly be unusable by anyone’s standards. If a part is uncovered but is of uncertain, um, ‘heritage’, I doubt the FAA will be too enthused about it. If it’s still packed in waxed paper, in its original shipping crate, and smothered in petrified Cosmoline, great! Things are at least looking up. If the found part is bone dry and only identifiable by a part number stamped in its surface somewhere, I’d be rather doubtful. At a very minimum, the part in question would have to be very carefully measured and compared against specifications and extensive Magnaflux or Zyglo examination for cracks would be in order. Even then, with no real idea of where that part may have been the last 60 years, I wouldn’t hold my breath! It might be best to try to auction the thing off as a fund raiser and hope a truly pristine part turns up someday.

Also, with supplies of metals becoming quite tight, especially in Asia where much of the worlds manufacturing happens today, any part that shows up somewhere is apt to be recycled if whoever discovers it is unaware of what it is or what it would be worth as a usable part versus its weight as scrap metal. Far too many fine antiques of all persuasions have met their fate this way!

Airframes are actually not such an insurmountable obstacle when it comes to servicing. Yes, they’re a big deal as far as safety and function go, for sure. But from Alclad sheet metal, pretty much anything that isn’t a tube or a forging can be fabricated. Forgings are usually a tall order, but aluminum alloy tube is widely available. Rivets can and are often replaced with fresh ones. Volunteers do this work in restoring old aircraft. It just takes lots of time and effort, and costs a pretty penny. Aluminum , along with most other metals, is not likely to get much cheaper anytime soon! But fabrication is quite doable and has been done many times through the years once the money and the right volunteers are on hand.

So, provided you can maintain an old airplane or build the dilapidated wreck of one into a flying airplane, who’s going to fly it?

Don’t count on WWII vets to do it! For one thing, any given WWII vet is likely in his mid-80’s right now. Those veteran pilots who are still with us and have even a remote chance of passing a flight physical typically never flew again after leaving the service. Some did, but perhaps 80% never did anything with aviation again. Generally, the ones who did truly loved flying; all but a very few hated flying in combat. Admittedly, it was brutal. Very stressful of course, but the fact that it was about forty degrees below zero at operational altitude really made life in the air miserable. It sure wasn’t pleasure flying!

I personally do not recall ever seeing a warbird pilot over about sixty years of age. I think a lot of them are in their late forties or early fifties. They’ve got a lot of flying credentials and experience, yet are still young enough that operating aircraft with little to nothing in the way of ‘creature comforts’ isn’t too big of a challenge. In virtually all of those old aircraft, especially bombers, you’ve got to do some real climbing around to get in and out of them. One needs to be flexible to navigate around a B-17, and being a short guy is a definite asset! At 5’7” and 135 pounds, I can assure you that I’m glad I wasn’t any bigger when I explored any of those old aircraft. Climate control was essentially an afterthought and usually noted as being ineffective unless at very low altitude in fair weather. Ergonomics left a lot to be desired, and quite often seat cushions weren’t used – crewmen sat on their parachutes!

Flying isn’t getting any cheaper. Right now, earning your private pilot’s certificate will cost about $5000 and then some. A B-17 bomber is a complex, high performance aircraft with a tail wheel and multiple engines. Guess what? Your private pilot’s certificate doesn’t authorize you to operate an aircraft that fits any one of those categories, let alone all four!

Each one is a rating you’ve got to find a certified instructor to check you out on.

A complex airplane is one with retractable landing gear and variable pitch propellers. A high performance airplane has more than 200 horsepower. By those standards, a B-17 is beyond complex, and since it’s rated for about 4,800 horsepower, you can see that it’s also very high performance. Regardless, it’s not too tough to find an instructor to check you off on complex and high performance aircraft as there are plenty of single engine aircraft in common use that fit in one or even both of those categories. I know a number of budding pilots, however, who’ve learned the hard way that finding someone who is able and willing to certify you on multi-engine aircraft or tail-draggers isn’t too easy. If a young pilot can find someone to check them off for these advanced ratings, it won’t be cheap as the student pays the entire cost unless blessed with an employer who will take care of it. In most cases, anyone wishing to log some flight hours in a B-17 will have a long, expensive journey ahead of them until they can reach the point where one of the organizations still operating these aircraft (such as the CAF, the Collings Foundation, or the Experimental Aircraft Association) would even think about letting them lay a hand on a control yoke while the plane is in the air.

So far, in this discussion I’ve presumed that the worst that can happen is for an old airplane to be grounded because of intractable fuel and maintenance issues. Sadly, there are much worse ways a vintage flying machine can be ‘grounded’.

I can think of any number of accidents through the years in which historic aircraft have crashed and been destroyed. Fires have also eliminated a number of them. An electrical short at the wrong time and in the wrong place can cause big-time trouble for sure, and most aircraft built from about 1940 onward have miles and miles of electrical wire within.

Another infamous cause of fires in old aircraft, specifically bombers, is malfunctioning Auxiliary Power Units. An APU is essentially a portable generator mounted in the airplane. A gasoline engine runs it, similar to the one you’d go buy at your local home center or farm store.

When the engines are off but more electricity is needed than the airplane’s batteries can be expected to deliver, the APU’s job is to generate that electricity to operate systems while the plane is on the ground. A B-29 ‘Superfortress’ bomber named the ‘Kee-Bird’ was marooned in Greenland for about forty years until a salvage team set up camp there and spent a couple of years and a tremendous amount of money to make it airworthy again so it could be flown out of there. They were running up the freshly installed engines when a malfunctioning APU caught fire. All they could do was get out of the plane and watch it burn to the ground. What a heartbreaker! Remember: it may be a metal, but aluminum burns very well once you get it started and is quite difficult to extinguish!

Since the airworthy vintage aircraft of this world tour during the summer months, there is always the chance that one (or more) may be on display somewhere when severe weather becomes a real issue. Smaller aircraft might be able to be sheltered in a hangar, but quite often there will be no where to put a B-17 or similar large aircraft should a severe thunderstorm roll in. All one can do is tie it down to the ramp and pray!

A Texas tornado really ripped things up at Carswell AFB, TX back in about 1952 or so. A good portion of our B-36 strategic bomber force was on the flight line at the time. B-36’s, which were HUGE bombers with ten engines, were shoved into each other and generally bashed up pretty good.

I think a lot of tax dollars and thousands of hours of diligent labor saved most if not all of the B-36’s damaged that day – possibly a third to a half of the USAF’s inventory of strategic bombers at the time! Remember, we didn’t have Minuteman ICBM’s then, and the B-47 and the B-52 were just becoming realities. The ’36, originally planned during WWII, was our main deterrent from the Soviets, who had demonstrated that they also had the atomic bomb by that time. Stalin was still alive and in power then, too. Had repair not have been possible, Convair would have likely been glad to sell Uncle Sam more B-36’s. If a B-17 was demolished in a tornado, I doubt Boeing would be willing to gear up to build another one, even if the money could be raised to do it.

Anytime you have the chance to see or experience some significant artifact of our American heritage, especially if it’s a vehicle and it’s in working order, try like heck not to pass it up.

Years ago, one could have said the chance may not come around again for a long time. Now it might be more accurate to say that you may never have the chance again!

Seize the day,

The TiGor