10 Feb A ride on the Liberty Belle
Yesterday, February 9, 2009, I rode on the Liberty Belle, a restored World War II B-17. It was an amazing opportunity, an experience of a lifetime, to visualize what their plane must have looked like to the crew of our Dad’s B-17, the Liberty Lady. The Liberty Belle is also a B-17G, newer because it came out of the factory in 1945. Our captain explained that there is only one B-17 in the world that actually saw combat that is flying today, and that plane is in France. All the other existing, restored, combat B-17’s are in museums.
The Liberty Belle B-17 will take to the skies again over Atlanta February 14-15 and February 21-22. Flight hours at 10 am to 5 pm each day. The flight experience is 45 minutes with approximately half an hour in flight. Flight experiences are $430. While this sounds expensive, it must be put into perspective when compared to a B-17’s operating cost. A Flying Fortress costs over $4500 per flight hour. The Liberty Foundation also spends over $1,000,000 annually to keep the Liberty Belle airworthy and out on tour. The foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit flying museum and funds generated help offset these high costs. To reserve seats, contact Scott Maher at 918-340-0243 or email smaher@libertyfoundation.org. If you are interested in seeing the B-17 land and take-off and don’t necessarily want to take a ride, the Dekalb Peachtree Airport address is 1 Aviation Way, Atlanta, GA.
Below are some pictures I took yesterday.
Tail gunner position from the outside
Without a doubt, the loneliest place to be. The tail gunner on the Liberty Lady was RB Trumble. RB was in the perfect position to see what was happening from behind and help keep the pilot in formation. Bill Dixon: The tail was indeed lonely (I flew one mission there when our tail gunner was in the hospital.) But we didn’t sing to keep the tail gunner connected to the rest of the crew as the crew did in the movie (not the documentary) Memphis Belle. The radio operator was also isolated from the rest of the crew but had a good deal more space around him. (Earlier models of the 17 had a gun in the radio room that pointed straight up but that was eliminated when the powers-that-were concluded that very few attacks came from straight up.)
Important: If anyone else reads this and has information to edit or add, please make a comment. THANKS, Pat
Mike Potthast
Posted at 19:23h, 10 FebruaryWow Patti. This looks like fun. I bet it gave you goose bumps. We used to have rides out of Polk City here in Florida and they stopped a few years ago, but the B17 is inside an exhibit at Fantasy of Flight. You can sit in the plane and walk-through… but no flights. Awesome..
Barbara Ann
Posted at 04:41h, 11 FebruaryPatti, what an awesome awesome day. Your photographs are beautiful. CNN & Fox News should pay you for yours! Did you get to talk to any of the reporters?
Thanks so much for the photos and your explanations. It makes it more real for all of us who are living vicariously through your experience!
Bill Dixon
Posted at 15:26h, 11 FebruaryPic 1 – If you look closely under the horizontal stabilizer, you can see the tail gunner’s door. The door that is open is the waist door and the step there was not available to us.
Pic 2 – The plexiglass nose is configured slightly differently than on our B-17G. It appears to have a much larger flat surface than ours.
Pic 3 – Early on the German fighter attacks were in large part from the rear but they soon came to realize that frontal attacks were the most productive for them as the bombardier, who usually had no gunner training, had only one gun pointing forward and, other than that one gun, only the top turret could fire at them. On the later 17s the chin turret, controlled by the bombardier and with two 50s, was added. However, the frontal attack was still the most productive for them.
Pic 4 – If you look at the side of the ball, opposite the guns, you can see one of the two door latches for entering the ball. The gunner entered the turret only after the plane was airborne as the guns had to be pointed straight down for him to get in. He also got out before landing.
Pic 5 – I don’t know whether all the G models had enclosed, offset waist windows but ours did and as the right waist gunner, I hated them. If you look below the window you will note that the gunner at that position is almost over the ball turret, the turret ring left an opening between the ball and the ring. The wind found that opening and came up into the plane, over the body of the waist gunner and out the tail wheel well. At -40 to -60 degrees below zero, that wind was cold. I froze my left ear to my helmet on one mission because of that wind. The open waist window did not produce the same effect as any wind that came in through it went to the rear of the gunner unless he was firing from about 1 to 2 o’clock (and in that case he might even be crouching as he had to fire over the prop arcs of the No. 3 and 4 engines and the wind would be above him.)
Pic 6 – The tail was indeed lonely (I flew one mission there when our tail gunner was in the hospital.) But we didn’t sing to keep the tail gunner connected to the rest of the crew as the crew did in the movie (not the documentary) Memphis Belle. The radio operator was also isolated from the rest of the crew but had a good deal more space around him. (Earlier models of the 17 had a gun in the radio room that pointed straight up but that was eliminated when the powers-that-were concluded that very few attacks came from straight up.)
Pic 7 – This hatch is at the front left side of the plane and was used by the pilot, copilot, bombardier, navigator, and top turret/engineer to enter the plane. They had to grasp the top inside of the door frame and swing their legs and derriere into the plane – for some of them it was their exercise for the day!
Pic 8 – This door opened into the waist area of the plane and was used by the radio operator, ball turret gunner, tail gunner and two waist gunners to enter the plane. The step up was rather high but manageable.
Pic 9 – This is the waist area and is indeed where the two waist gunners played “bumpbutt” particularly before the offset windows introduced in the G model. Actually, after a couple of missions, waist gunners could sense where the other gunner was and where he was likely to move so were able to avoid most “bumpbutt” encounters.
On takeoffs and landings, everybody in the back of the plane gathered in the radio room with the radio operator sitting in his chair reversed so he faced the rear of the plane, the rest sitting on the floor with two gunners having their backs against the forward bulkhead and their knees drawn up to allow the other two gunners to have their backs against the drawn up knees and their feet braced against the rear bulkhead. The purpose of this was in case of an aborted takeoff or a crash there would be the maximum protection possible. This was the only time that we actually sat on the floor. In our plane, each waist gunner brought an empty ammo box to sit on. They could be kicked back toward the tail wheel and out of the way if necessary but were high enough to allow us to see out of the waist windows. After we reached the middle of the Channel or North Sea, the point where we test fired our guns, we pushed the boxes out of the way and stood up until we reached the English coast on the way home. The ball turret gunner entered the ball some time before this and the tail gunner, who had a seat rather like a bicycle seat, also entered the tail earlier.
As the armorer on the plane, I had checked, to the extent possible, all guns at the time they were installed, but on at least three missions had to try to fix malfunctions after test firing. Once I could, once I couldn’t, and once I could fix some but not others.
Pic 10 – If you think about it, you realize that an attack from the side would be exceptionally unproductive because the 17 is moving forward and not standing still. Because of this the attacker has to aim in front of the 17 and let it fly into his projectiles. Attackers from the rear have to fly what is called “a pursuit curve,” i.e., they have to come in from at least 5 o’clock or 7 o’clock and aim in front of the plane or come in directly to the rear of the plane. When they attack from any of these areas, the tail gunner and the top turret gunner or the ball gunner have angles at them and, except from dead rear, so does the waist gunner on one side or the other (of course the waist gunner can shoot off his own horizontal stabilizer.) In frontal attacks the waist guns are almost useless for a couple of reasons. No. 1 is that the waist gunner can shoot off the props of the two engines on his side (the top turret guns have stops that prevent this for them) or the outer wing panels and thus has a limited field of fire to the front. No. 2 is that you can’t swing your gun fast enough to hit a fighter going past your side of your plane after a frontal attack and, too, in a formation there may be other 17s in your field of fire and they take a dim view of random firing in their direction.
Pic 11 – The red ribbon-like thing on the left of the pic is the emergency release for the waist door. Note how the doorframe area above it has had the paint removed by hands grabbing it to help get over that giant step into the plane.
The brown canvas in the middle of the pic is a covering for the rear wheel and closes off the wheel well. We didn’t have one on any of the 17s I flew in.
The tail gunner did have a door next to him on his left through which he could exit in case of necessity. It may appear in this pic as a sort of shadow. You did have to crawl through to get to the tail but it was not much more difficult than getting through the bomb bay when carrying a full load of 500 pound general purpose bombs and you were wearing your sheepskins.
Pic 12 – The suspension system in this pic is entirely different from the one in our plane. Ours resembled and A frame rather than a single rod suspension.
The yellow object is indeed a walk-around oxygen bottle and this appears to be one of the larger ones. Because I was the armorer and had to repair or try to repair inoperative guns and hanging bombs, I have used up several of these things. In the process, I learned that when you suck bottom on one of those things, disconnect and depend on the ambient air until you can get to another full bottle or reach an ox hose connection. The bottles don’t manufacture oxygen, they just contain oxygen. Fortunately one of the crew recognized my plight and grabbed another bottle and hooked me up.
Pic 13 – The radio room gun was, as far as I know, never in any of the G models and had been dispensed with on later F models. It was just extra weight.
Unless the Liberty Lady was a Pathfinder ship, it didn’t have radar.
Pic 14 – I don’t remember any ropes to hold in 1943-44.
The big problems with working in the bomb bay during a mission were: no oxygen, having to wear sheepskins because of no electric heated suit plug-ins, and, at least twice for me, having bombs hang up as the shackles didn’t release completely – once having to kick the bombs out individually. The other time having a large hole in the bomb bay doors with the bottoms of the four lowest incendiary bombs gone, the insides leaking out the hole, and the front parts of the bombs resting on the doors with the back portions still held by the shackles. Now, that was scary. Luckily the doors opened properly and, when the shackles were released individually, the bombs dropped on Germany without taking us with them.
Pic 15 – Our pilot let each of us sit in the copilot’s seat and fly the plane for a few minutes while the pilot explained the basic instruments we would have to know if, in an emergency, we had to fly the plane. So I have flown a 17 for about 10 minutes.
Pic 16 – Claustrophobics could never have flown in the nose of a 17!! Even after you went through this “hallway” you couldn’t stand up.
Pic 17 – The view from the bombardier’s position was probably the scariest of all. He could see all of the flak ahead of us and from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock plus he got a head-on view of all the winking lights from those little planes that were attacking from the front. (For the uninitiated, those winking lights were 20-mm cannon fire.)
In addition to manning the bombsight (or dropping when the lead plane did,) the bombardier manned the nose turret and the device in the upper right of the picture is the control for that turret.
During the bomb run, the bombardier, through the bombsight, controlled the plane and his full attention was devoted to the task of dropping the bombs exactly where they were supposed to go. A difficult task when you know you are being attacked but necessary because that was the whole purpose of the mission.
Pic 18 – The navigator was probably the busiest man on the crew while preparing for and during the mission. Before the mission he had to know where we were going, what track we were to follow to get there, what track we were to follow coming back, where known flak concentrations were so we could steer clear of them, where German fighter fields were located, what planes were reported to be there and how many, what the weather was like on the way in and out, plus some things I have probably forgotten. During the flight, he had to keep track of where we were, make a note of every activity at all unusual, how heavy the flak was, where it was, from which direction fighters came and how they attacked, casualties in our Group or others in our Wing when he could see them, and man two guns.
He, too, could see the winking lights in head-on attacks.
Pic 19 – I believe this is one of the two guns used by the navigator.
Pic 20 – So true.
Johnny DiGeorge
Posted at 11:15h, 12 FebruaryBill – thanks for all the first-hand insight in the Liberty Belle photos, a fascinating read!
Bill Allen
Posted at 04:08h, 14 FebruaryThis whole section describing your flight on the B-17 is really well done, Patti. I learned so much from the photos and accompanying descriptions. Thank you very much Bill Dixon for adding your authentic insights, which made the photos even more fascinating…