Something you don't see everyday

display in B'ham., AL.< While I only saw the rear 3/4 view and it was flying away from me it sure looked like a B29. The B17 has that bump on the back and of course you can't miss a B24 tail. You sure it was in B'ham. yesterday? The only reason I commented was I didn't think many if any were flying!

restore

based in

through

I saw it in Milwaukee several years ago. It was here with a B-24 and both were open for the public to go through. It was quite an experience for me, since those were the two planes my father flew in combat: B-24s over Europe in WWII and B-29s over Korea.

-- Bill McC.

On Tue, 18 May 2004 22:41:49 UTC, Steve Hoskins wrote: 2000

The others could have preceded it. I had just gotten out of the vehicle when I saw it. Saw a lot of B-25s as a kid during WWII. Benefit of living in L.A., then.

On Tue, 18 May 2004 21:50:15 UTC, "Daniel A. Mitchell" wrote: 2000

I used to drive to work with an old B-24 crew chief. The 24s came with Pratt & Whitney engines but P&W couldn't meet the demand so Buick and Chey built engines. The P&W engines were rated for 1000 hours. The Buicks were giving 600 hours at the end of the war and still improving. The Chevy engines were used for ballast.

Off to bomb some Cnuks I suspose.

Sacramento Bee (local newspaper) was running full page adds this morning for B-17 and B-24 half hour "missions".... Popular around here....

+GF+

And someday, there will be another: "Doc".

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

Interesting seeing the B-29 fuselage on a flatbed truck. When I was somewhere around 7 to 9 years old one was on display (you could walk and crawl through it) at the War Memorial in Indianapolis.

I wish them luck. Such a restoration is a really major undertaking. And, once you get it flying again, the upkeep is tremendous. It costs a small fortune for every hour it's in the air. The old 'warbirds' are wonderful, but you need really robust funding to keep 'em flying.

A fair number of B-29's survive in museums, "stuffed and mounted". There have been other efforts to restore B-29's to flying condition. IIRC, there was one flying somewhere in Britain or Europe some years ago, but it's no longer listed among the flyable warbirds. I also recall that a few years ago a group found a downed B-29 somewhere in the arctic, and restored it THERE, sufficient to fly it out. They were all set to go when the APU malfunctioned on the ground, and set the whole plane afire. It was a total loss. What a shame.

B-17's and B-24's are also major projects, but not so much so as a B-29.

I've already recounted my impressions when "FIFI' visited Flint a couple years ago, but I'll add one more. The morning they left we had a low level ground haze, only maybe 100 feet deep, with visibility only a few hundred yards horizontally at the surface. You couldn't see nearby buildings, but the sky was clear above, and the Sun was shining.

They fired up the B-29 with great clouds of smoke as each engine 'caught'. We were out on the taxiway, and could watch those four huge propellors turning slowly in the mist. Then the B-29 taxied away. It was not at all hard to imagine yourself back in W.W.II, on Saipan or Tinian, on the morning of a raid. MOST impressive!

Dan Mitchell ==========

Pac Man wrote:

SALVÉ "Jon Miller" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

A Washington over California.... Nice one :) Beowulf

"Daniel A. Mitchell" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@umflint.edu...

There are many Russian lookalike's still in existence though I doubt any of them are flying. Beowulf

Almost All of the B-29s that are either now flying or recently on Static display are actually from the Navy at China Lake, CA. They were flown in, back in the late nineteen forties, taxied off the end of the runway, and stored for targets for Navy weapons testing. The last one left China Lake after being virtually stolen by a guy in Kansas City for his own museum. I think it was "Doc", but not sure. Most of them left in 1980~85 being removed by Kermit Weeks, and stored at a Salton Sea storage area.

I was the "Stricken Aircraft Manager" for the Navy in those days.

R>It'd be real hard to confuse either a B-17 or a B-24 with a B-29. >

On Thu, 20 May 2004 01:38:27 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@cox.net (Ernie Fisch) mumbled incoherently:

We have a flying museum here on Long Island that owns a B-17, B-24 but not sure about a B-25. That may be the planes you saw since they do make tours. At times, you can pay to be flown around the NY area in the B-17.

Ken (NY) Chairman, Department Of Redundancy Department ___________________________________ email:

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Beowulf ( snipped-for-privacy@swipnet.se) wrote: : : There are many Russian lookalike's still in existence though I doubt : any of them are flying. : : Here's the story of the Tupolev TU-4:

TUPOLEV

Some may still be flying in Communist China:

Russian Aviation Page: Which Russian build aircraft are still in service?

"..From rec.aviation.military FAQ by Ross Smith

• Boeing B-29 Superfortress: SORT OF -- China still has 15 Russian-built B-29 copies (Tu-4) on its inventory; these are now used entirely for training and research. One was fitted with a pylon-mounted disk for AEW radar experiments..."

--Jerry Leslie Note: snipped-for-privacy@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email

Good point. I didn't know many were still around, but the Soviets did acquire a B-29 late in the war (by 'internment', before they entered the Pacific war themselves), and copied it very closely.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Beowulf wrote:

I saw a B-17 when it was at West Bend, WI 2 or 3 years ago. Took the wife and kids to see it. Those planes looked mighty big in those film clips in "The World At War", but they're tiny!

Jay The Canada Goose is living proof that birds have cross-bred with cattle and rats.

Because it's as old as steam engines?

Jay The Canada Goose is living proof that birds have cross-bred with cattle and rats.

I think it was near the tip of Ellesmere Island, or somewhere up near Baffin Bay. I think it was a PBS Nova special; might be out on videotape/dvd.

I remembered it was a fuel leak, but definitely fire. It was sad to see about

3-5 summers of work go up in smoke with nothing to do about it. I remember they were so far north IIRC it was the Canadian military flying in their supplies.

Jay The Canada Goose is living proof that birds have cross-bred with cattle and rats.

It sounds like the recovery team didn't pay attention to the condition of the runway that they built.

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