Liberty Belle B-17 flew over my house...now it's gone...

Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe he could have made it the 7 miles back to the airport. Maybe not. Have you seen the pics of the plane overhead having already burned through the bottom of the wing in the fuel tank area? Scary! What if the wing had folded on the final approach when the 500 gallons on that side blew up? Then there would be 7 or 8 familes we would all be talking about, like when the B-26 went in almost 20 years ago. I've stood at the plaque in Midland in their honor listing all the crew members who died that day. I didn't know any of those guys as it was before my CAF involvement, but don't think it is not humbling standing there knowing that those guys loved WWII aircraft as much as I do, and they paid the price.

Heroes? Depends on your point of view I guess. If I had been on that flight, (and I have been up in a bomber before) and I got to go home to my family because the Liberty Belle pilots got her down safely, then yeah, I would consider them heroes. There isn't a pilot anywhere in the warbird movement (at least that I have met) that would trade those 7 lives for the B-17.

It ****s the aircraft was lost. It REALLY ****s. At the end of they day there are still 11 flying B-17s with 2 or 3 more being restored to airworthiness. IF one of the flying heavy bombers had to be lost, the B-17 is the most common compared to the B-24, B-29, PB4Y-2, etc.

 

didnt read the entire thread..

was the nose art able to be saved?

 

Not on the port side. There is a slight chance that the starboard side survived, but the nose rolled over, so it's hard to say if it did. I haven't seen any pics of the recovery yet.

 

bummer..

hopefully with it rolling over , maybe the dirt helped insulate it from burning up..

 

I am glad that the seven were able to get off safely. Shame they lost the plane.
My dad flew bombers in WW11, Canadian Air Force flying out of Britain over Europe. don't know what type though, he never said much.

 

Afraid to get the fire trucks stuck? WTF?

 

I agree HitchHiker. I've been a career firefighter for 24 years, and there is no way I'd refuse to take a pumper off road to reach a fire like that 'in case it got stuck'. Life and property, in that order. Very, very strange decision for the Fire Dept to make. I'd reckon they have some questions to answer.

The earlier post about the 'over-use of the terms hero and miracle' bothers me a bit. Easy to stand on the sidelines and say those folks aren't worthy of the name. It smacks of the 'revisionists' who now want to belittle Allied bomber crews and their sacrifices because they bombed civilians.

You weren't there.
You don't know.
You can only imagine.
And that's not the same.

 

I went up on this bird around three years ago.I was an aircrewman on a P-3 in the Navy. A magazine paid my way to write an article about it.
A few comments about a pilot's duty.I've seen planes get in trouble REAL FAST. A full load of fuel makes it worse.You look for the 1st place to set it down safely.You have numerous souls relying on you.
That plane took up numerous WWII veterans for their "last ride".
It never saw combat.It was built at the very end of WWII. It was the last version.
Think about how people would feel if the plane went up in flames as the pilot tried to make it back to a strip. He did the right thing.Got it down and got every one out safely.This is a video of the view from the bombadier's seat. However,I'm not sure if it will upload.

 

i was on the belle a few months ago in burbank with my girls, what a bummer a friend of mine is good friends with one of the pilots that fly's the plane and he is crushed.....

 

I got to walk through it when it was here in Denver.It was awesome,I got to talk to a actual belly gunner crew member from WW2 as we did the walk through.He is 90 years old now and told us amazing stories. His grand daughter brought him for a trip down memory lane.For being 90 he climbed around in that plane like he was 19 again.He told us about all the gadgets and what they were for. Man that plane was crude built compared to today's but it got the job done. I complemented him for having the guts to do this,He laughed and said we were dumb ***ed kids that didn't know any better.he said they told us to do it ( so we did.) It is sad knowing it is gone for future generations not to see.

 

What a sad loss. Another irreplaceable treasure from the past gone. Glad that no one was injured though.

 

I've seen her fly around the Salinas Valley and at the airport. My parent's house over looks the airport. Such a beautiful piece of machinery and a engineering marvel. I remember when I was younger (maybe 15 or ago so years, I almost 23) I was at the Calif International Airshow in Salinas with my dad. They had a WWII reenactment. Ever since then I've had a HUGE soft spot in heart for those old war birds. One of my best friends grandpa was a belly gunner made it back home flew I believe it was 17 missions.

 

I get a little overly sentimental about stuff like this.. I work about a mile and a half from the north end of Boeing field, and I've seen the liberty belle coming and going for a long time.. Every time it would fly over, all work would stop till it was out of sight, and this was several times a day.. I'm really bummed about this.