The Muskegon Air Fair was this last weekend. This year the big attraction was the Blue Angels (been a few years since I saw them).
Anyways, my wife surprised me with an early Christmas gift -- a ride on the CAF Texas Raiders B17! (and here I was thinking she just hated my addiction
)
I'm not much of a storyteller so please bear with me. However, if you are geeked about WWII airplanes in the slightest, don't miss this opportunity if you get it.
The biggest impression I got was how small it really is inside, even though it looks so large from the outside. Crawling on hands and knees, underneath the pilot/copilots, to get into the forward positions; walking across the bomb bay on a platform barely wider than my feet; skirting around the upper part of the ball turret to get towards the back. Although we could not go back to the rear gunner position, it was another hands and knees thing to get back there from the waist gunner positions.
All in all it was a very smooth ride, even smoother than some commercial flights I've been on. Even during a few tight circles (yes the radius seemed small), and takeoff/landing.
And it's quite loud, especially up front with those propellers spinning a few feet away from your head. With the waist gunner windows open, I can't imagine they did not freeze to death (we were only a couple thousand feet up, but 140 mph with windows open and high alt -- wow).
The best thing was that I got to sit in the bombardier position during takeoff. The seat is right behind the Norden, which is of course in the nose of the airplane, right where the bubble starts. My thighs overflowed the sides of the tiny seat (and I am not a big person); there was very little back support, and a single seatbelt that ran across my thighs instead of my waist. You can't get any more forward than this position... my feet overhung the plexiglass as we took off, and I could easily lean forward and basically be outside the fuselage -- inside the bubble. We even flew over some factories, and I got to look through the Norden and watched the crosshair cross over the factory and smokestack.
The gunner posistions -- I really can't see how most of the gunners could track well (but maybe I was just excited). There was basically no vision in the forward guns (except for the bubble -- but that's not where the guns were pointing). The top gunner has a nice bubble. The waist gunners had a great view, but I tried to imagine myself on my knees or on a short seat, tracking the gun back and forth....it looked hard. Unfortunately we had to view the ball and rear positions from the outside, but neither one looked like it had much room and would be easy to shoot from.
As a bonus, one of the riders was a vet that flew 20 sorties, mainly as the ball gunner.
It was a total blast, and gave me a better appreciation for what these crew did for their country in WWII.
Fury
VMF-111 Devil Dogs
[ 07-09-2001: Message edited by: Fury ]
