B-17 Liberty Belle Air to Air

Beautiful, amazing what the men went thru that flew them. You sell prints?

edit clicked on your site, I see you do.
 
Well, hopefully they get what's left of her back in the air again. I understand the guys at Douglas are working on it. The Yanks Are Back...good DVD. ;)
 
Velocity173 said:
Well, hopefully they get what's left of her back in the air again. I understand the guys at Douglas are working on it. The Yanks Are Back...good DVD. ;)
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From the pics I saw after she burned, I didn't think there was enough left to rebuild.
 
SkyDog58 said:
From the pics I saw after she burned, I didn't think there was enough left to rebuild.
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Did the data plate survive?

I visited the restoration shop in Kissimmee (Tom Reilly's shop in those days) and there was a piece of aluminum about the size of a desk sitting out back. The tour guide told us "That's a P-38 we're going to restore." I looked inside and there was one rudder pedal in there. So it was a section of the cockpit. They were in the middle of rebuilding the entire aft section of a B-17 (every thing from forward of the waist gunners back) from sheet aluminum.

So they can if somebody has the money & time.

John
 
Liberty Bell and one other B-17 are being rebuilt in Douglas, GA. Two flying aircraft will ultimately emerge.
 
kyleb said:
Same location, different restoration shops.

Nice place to spend an afternoon if you're interested.
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Yeah I need to get over there one of these days.
 
I'm gonna sound like the Chamber of Commerce, but when I visited a couple of years ago, Tom Reily and his girlfriend (?) Weezie showed me through all of the P-82 stuff, talked the details over with me, let me climb inside the fuselage, and ultimately took me to lunch. And I gave her a ride in the RV-6.

After that, I walked over and asked to look through the B-17 restoration facility. The guys working there said "Go anywhere you want and look at anything you want. We're too busy to show you around." Which was perfect for me.

Later, I went to the on-field museum they have which retains many (most?) of the buildings from WWII when Douglas was a flight training base for the AAF. Amazing how basic the facilities were that trained all of those pilots 70+ years ago.

There is plenty to see and do there.
 
IMG_2440.JPG IMG_2442.JPG IMG_2445.JPG IMG_2448.JPG IMG_2450.JPG IMG_2452.JPG Well not much going on with the B-17. Just a few volunteers and by the looks of it, they need a lot more parts to have a complete aircraft. Wish I could write them a check for a few million to help out.

The C-47 is the one that ferried the Greenland exhibition guys to get Glacier Gal. She has a WWII history on D-Day, including a 20 MM hit to the right wing.

The XP-82 looks somewhat complete. The reason why the engine run was in feathered pitch is because they had Allison governors vs RR governors. Almost the same, but not quite. They could only run at idle and feathered because of that. First flight is tenitive for this year but there's some confusion as to when or even where that'll be. No owner yet and with 15 million into the project, it'll take a true warbird aficionado to purchase this thing.
 
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Yeah I was wondering where that was! Even scrolled back thru your pics thinking I missed it.
 
mscard88 said:
Yeah I was wondering where that was! Even scrolled back thru your pics thinking I missed it.
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Yeah, from what I was told, she flew paratroopers on D-Day and a glider during Operation Market Garden. Just sits on the ramp now though.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah, from what I was told, she flew paratroopers on D-Day and a glider during Operation Market Garden. Just sits on the ramp now though.
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Well she's earned her rest I'd say! ;)
 
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