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BRIDGES
A COMMENTARY BY DOUG MEYERWednesday November 16th, 2005
A taste of historySensing a story, I asked him if he had flown a B-17 and indeed he had, for a short time, anyway. He explained that as a young man of 20 he had been piloting a B-17 on his first bombing mission over Germany when he was shot down by a (probably) equally young man flying a Messerschmitt Bf - 109. My pilot friend successfully bailed out over Holland and spent the rest of the war in a German prison camp which, he felt, probably saved his life.
This got me to thinking about an experience I had in a B-17 last summer and I was further reminded about this last Friday on Veteran's day.
There had been 12,761 B-17's built by 1945. Nearly 5000 were lost in combat and today there less than 15 flying examples of this important artifact. I was lucky enough to get a ride in one last July. "My" airplane, a B-17G sporting the nose art of another B-17G, "Fuddy Duddy", was built by Douglas Aircraft in 1944 in Long Beach, CA and never saw combat. (B-17s, although widely known as a Boeing designed aircraft, were manufactured by Boeing, Douglas, Vega (Lockheed) and Martin during the war). Notably, in 1946 this airplane was used by Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur as "VIP Transport" in the Pacific. The real "Fuddy Duddy" was assigned to the famous 8th Air Force, 708th Bombardment squadron, 447th group, and was lost in a midair collision over Mannheim Germany Dec. 30, 1944.
"Fuddy Duddy" is currently owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association and is used for promotional tours. I was given an opportunity for such a ride at The EAA's Airventure airshow and fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin last summer. By today's standards, a B-17 isn't a very large airplane, but at it's inception it was the largest, most powerful bomber in the world. At 65,000 pounds fully loaded and with a wingspan of 103 feet, it is 30 feet narrower than a C-130 and 10,000 pounds lighter than a fully loaded F-14. Power is provided by four, nine cylinder Wright 1820 (cubic inch) radial engines of about 1300 hp each. These engines are the largest of the single row radials and have integral gear driven centrifugal superchargers downstream of General Electric turbochargers and intercoolers. I believe they were the first use of turbocharging on US aircraft. Imagine going to war in this thing at age 20 with maybe 200 hours of flight time under your belt, in command of the biggest bomber in the world, with a crew of nine plus yourself.
For takeoff, I sat in the radio operators position, on what was really a shelf more than a seat at a small wooden desk with a very simple vacuum tube radio directly in front with a small window on my left. The bomb bay was through a hatch directly in front of me; the two .50 cal. waist gun positions were on each side just behind me.
If you have the internal combustion gene, like I do, the sound of a big radial turning and coughing to life is unforgettable, and I wasn't disappointed as the starting sequence began, one engine at time until all 36 cylinders were firing. The airplane was rocking gently on it's two huge tires and small tailwheel as the pilots went through their pre-flight checks, revving and checking each engine in turn. When on the ground, you steer an airplane like this with differential braking and power. We were parked on the grass and, feeling just like it must have felt on those fields in England in 1942, it took a fair amount of power to get moving. The engines revved alternately and the brakes squeaked loudly as we maneuvered to the runway. When lined up, and as the pilots smoothly advanced the throttles, I was grinning like a kid as we began the takeoff roll. Most people expect that this would be a noisy experience. There is no insulation, there are open areas, and there is 5200 horsepower, but the big G E turbos do quite a job of muffling on those big Wrights and the props are turning quite slow at the maximum of 2500 rpm. There was a sense of power like you feel in a big diesel truck but not a great deal of noise. Acceleration was by no means brisk. Since the B-17 is a "taildragger" it is already in a flying attitude as it is rolling down the runway and it did not take long for the aircraft to leave the ground. Because of the nose-high attitude, it seemed more to just "levitate" at, I'm guessing, about 85mph, rather than pitch up and climb like you might experience in a modern aircraft. I had permission to move anywhere in the airplane after takeoff, so I headed for the clear nose bubble and the bombardier's seat.
In order to get there, I had to walk through the bombay. This area is about eight feet from one end to the other and to get across you must walk on an aluminum walkway about 8" wide. The hand-holds are rope, strung along each side. If you look down about four feet you can see daylight through the split between the two clamshell doors below. There are bomb racks along the fuselage sides from top to bottom, about 10 feet.
It's incredible to realize what a large aircraft it took to carry and deliver an 8,000 pound payload. At the front of the bombay you can climb up a couple steps to the cockpit or crawl around on your knees to the nose bubble.
We were climbing to the west out over Lake Winnebago as I sat there with the once super secret Norden bombsight between my legs. It was at this moment that I was almost overcome with what I was actually seeing. The shadow of the bomber, running across the green water below is no less what a young bombardier would have seen heading out over the English Channel on an 8 hour, cold, dangerous flight, not knowing if he would ever return. I literally just sat there for minutes thinking about how that felt.
Next, I climbed up and stood behind the pilots. They were having quite a good time, as I would, just flyin' around over the lake giving us passengers a time to crawl all over the plane. I'm struck with how rudimentary the navigation instruments are, considering the distances these aircraft were flown. The engine and flight instruments are not much different from what is found in any aircraft other than those with the latest "glass cockpit" technology.
Moving aft, I stood at one of the waist guns that poke out each side of the rear fuselage. Until late in the war, the ports through which these guns fired were simply open windows, later they were plexiglass with ports. Considering that missions were flown at 25 to 30,000 feet where the temperatures are 40 below zero, it is again hard to imagine the conditions that these men worked in on a daily basis. There are usually 13 .50 cal guns on most B-17's, which is what helped give the aircraft the nickname "Superfortress". What I didn't know until now was that these Browning M-2's with their 13 rounds per second firing rate, each had a total of less than one minute's worth of ammunition available. Shots had to count.
As we cruised back to the airport at about 180 mph (the airplane was good for about 300 mph at 30,000 feet), I climbed back up to the flight deck and just enjoyed the view and the sound of the four big radials thumping along.
The big Superfort lands at about 75 mph and as the tires hit the cement, I was surprised at the loud screech. They don't chirp like so many aircraft I've flown. They're so big and soft that they take quite a while to spin up and sound like a semi with the brakes locked. We taxied off the runway and back onto the grass, the engines were shut down simultaneously and the smell of hot oil wafted through the open windows. I sat as long as I could, just drinking it in.
As I climbed down the ladder off that airplane, I thought of those who had climbed these ladders so many years ago, and especially those that didn't come home.
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THE AUTHOR
Doug Meyer has been working with race engines professionally and as a hobby for the past 45 years. He has built engines for everything from dragbikes and cars to outboard race boats, from the famous Can-Am sports cars and an F-1 car to motorcycle streamliners. He spent many years as a professional race team member and engine builder. Everything from nitrous to nitro, Doug's had his hands in it. He has set 16 Bonneville speed records...
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