Kurt Oblinger wrote:
>
> Had one of those memorable experiences yesterday. Puttering around the
> house after work resorting the car mags into new stacks while trying
> very hard not to throw any out. Then I hear this noise, its aways off
> but its getting louder fast. I know this noise, there are very few things
> that sound like this.
Yes, I know... four big double-row radial engines with turbochargers....
> Its getting louder and the windows are rattling
> a bit, charge out the front door. Then its there, directly over the house
> at no more than 1000 feet, under the low clouds, a B-24 Liberator! The
> only B-24 still flying, perfectly restored, appropriately named "All
>American".
> Made me think of the stories I read of the Ploesti raids. Soon after came
> its flight mate, the B-17G "Man-O-War", but it passed about a mile east.
This plane, I believe, was restored by a fellow in Massachusetts, in the
Hudson area. The Larz Anderson Museum (old cars) outside of Boston had
an auction several years ago to raise money, and one of the items
auctioned off was an hour's ride in that plane. My youngest brother and
I contemplated bidding on it for my father, who was a navigator in such
a plane during WWII. After we discovered that the minimum bid was far
beyond our means, we told my father of our intentions. He said, "good
thing, you would have wasted your money--I'd never get into one of those
again." I'd not accounted for what he'd said in the past about having to
bail out of one over the northern French-German border in June, 1944.
The principal attribute of the plane was its long range, because of the
amount of fuel which could be carried in the thick-sectioned, high-lift
Davis airfoil wing. But Consolidated did a lot of things cheaply. No
fuel gauges. Only sight gauges for each wing tank... made of glass. At
17,000 feet, an anti-aircraft round went through the engineer's area and
hit the sight gauges. They exploded, and a torrent of aviation fuel in
the wings dumped into the flight cockpit through the ports for the
gauges, fueling the flames. Every exposed bit of skin on my father's
body was almost instantly charred.
He stumbled out of his seat and fell through the open bomb bay doors and
passed out. At about 14,000 feet, he regained consciousness, but not
long enough to pull the d-ring on the parachute, and passed out again.
At 800 feet, he regained consciousness and opened the chute, and passed
out once again. He landed unconscious, breaking his ankle. Vichy French
farmers found him and turned him over to the Germans, who diligently
treated his burns, but did not set his ankle, which made him less liable
to escape. He spent nine months in Stalag 1, a German prisoner of war
camp in northern Germany, about thirty miles south of the Baltic Sea.
The plane is a wonderful bit of nostalgia, like the name "Spitfire," but
it was not the best of engineering... a little like Lucas electrics on
British cars. <smile>
> Before I was a car nut I was and still am an airplane nut.
And so was I, Kurt. <g>
Cheers.
--
My other Triumph doesn't run, either....
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