On Saturday November 20th, 2004 I had the pleasure of taking a ride on a 60 year old "Queen Of The Skies". The B-17g "Fuddy Duddy" was on it's last leg of the US tour at the Lakeland Linder Airport. I was lucky enough to be able to get a 35 min ride on this beautiful flying machine. They returned in November of 2005 to Orlando and was able to show Ana the inside of the plane this time.
B-17g Flying Fortress (with 13 - 50 caliber machine guns and 17,600 lbs of ordanance)
On the tarmac ~ 4-1200 HP engines allowed her to return on occasion with only 1 engine functioning
No blind spots on the 17g. She wouldn't go down with out a fight.
Building up speed for takeoff (it was very LOUD inside!)
The runway was hell but the liftoff was smooth as a feather.
In the radio man's seat
If I wasn't so damn excited I would have taken more still pics. I shot almost 60 min of video instead. Just gotta figure out how to turn it into a MPEG file.
"Oh... What a Lucky Man he was!"
Links
German tribute site "Queen of the Skies"