B-29 Flies Again!

On the subject of making classic aircraft airworthy again, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, as a lifelong aeronut I think it's very cool. On the other hand, how many of these things should we have? My home town has one of what I believe are the only two airworthy Lancasters in the world. And both required an incredible amount of work to retore. All by zealous volunteers I'm guessing. So you have one on each side of the Atlantic, and you take it very easy at airshows, because it would be sorta too bad to prang the goddam thing.

Some people went to Great Time and Expense to restore an Avro Vulcan, the 50s-era British nuclear-strike design. Well, what an impressive sight that was. (Saw many at the CNE air show in Toronto as a kid.)
Great, but after a couple of years doing the airshow circuit, it had to be retired because it was simply too freaking expensive to keep going.

Here's a brief video of the thing flying, with its characteristic howl, on a blustery day.

The line between "missile" and "bomber" is getting kinda blurry, yeah. For now, tho, we don't have too many missiles that can go to some target area and do donuts while waiting for an aim point to make itself known. Missiles can't do the CAS/BAI mission, or at least not yet they can't. For hitting fixed targets, tho, missiles make perfect sense.

Sure, and that's why I used the word "nuclear". Tactical bombing is a different matter.

The term floating around is "optionally crewed."

Speaking of final flights, check this out. I loved the Vanguard -- Air Canada had them in the early 60s.

Here's the last one landing at some sort of museum on a way-too-short runway. Look what happens.

Just found this feel-good promotional video on the Lancaster, aboard which many thousands of Canadians were killed during WWII. Which is why the airplane is a big deal in Canuckville. Bomber crews in Europe had about a 50% death rate. They were scared shitless, of course, as any honest survivor would tell you. The remains of many were hosed out of a shattered turret, as someone wrote.
And just imagine being on the ground during something like Hamburg, Dresden or Tokyo.

Am just reading Richard Overy's The Bombing War, a survey of bombing in WWII. It ain't a pretty picture, and no laughing matter.

So, is restoring and flying these things good or bad? Who knows?

I seem to remember something about American bomber crews in Europe during World War Two had a death rate higher than the infantry.

Almost 20 years ago, I visited the Castle Air Museum. They have a B-36...



That thing is just enormous. I stood out at the wingtip and looked over to the cockpit and that was a long, long distance. Couldn't believe these things ever got airborne!

Remember what happened when that crazy pilot (a colonel and wing safety officer at that) tried to barrel roll a B-52 while practicing for an air show.

I hear ya... got to be up close and personal with the Memphis Belle in Hartford once. The old birds are always a thrill, but the ones with a legend.... <3

I see the Mynarski Memorial Lanc in air several times a year

Dad still has some of the press kit memorabilia from Vulcan crews when he was on the ATC crews for the Ex in the 70s. I think there's a tie tack and a couple of glory shots signed by crews. He also has a story about running into the one crew on his honeymoon in Hawaii... but that's more about substantial alcohol consumption.

Indeed. Even though they told us not to touch the plane, I couldn't resist, and so when everyone was walking away, I placed my palm against the fuselage. I got to touch the plane that dropped the bomb, that was such a pivotal point in the war against Japan. In that moment, I felt triumph, and sadness.

I was reading the magazine "Air and Space" back when the Vulcan was being restored to flying condition. IIRC the one they restored was one of the ones that could still taxi.

But anyway one of the motivations for restoring the Vulcan to flyable condition was that they worried that an American collector might buy it.

OK, let's stay well away from that issue. On this thread at least.

I've never seen (or heard) it fly.
The Andy Mynarski story is quite something. Fate is a damn tricky business.
[To get out, the read gunner in the Lanc had to (1) turn his turret around completely (2) squeeze out of it (3) put his parachute on
(4) open the escape hatch and (5) jump. No wonder these crews had a 50% chance of death.]

Well, some people see pink elephants, others Vulcan crews. Or maybe pink Vulcan crews.
It was one impressive machine.

IIRC, there are as many MIA WWII aircrew as Viet Nam MIA. Every once in a while somebody turns up in a Pacific island wreck, or a plow turns a guy up in a field in France.

It's good. It's history. And they're pretty.

There were certainly far more MIA's in WWII, even in relative proportion of numbers. For one thing, there simply weren't the escape mechanisms that were later available in Indochina. And in WWII you spent many hours flying far from home, a good deal of it over treacherous waters. I mean, if a person was killed, how often was anyone even going to find his body? Think Glen Miller.

How many of the people who go to see these things have even a rudimentary knowledge of history?

To me, the Lanc and the B-29 might be impressive aircraft, but pretty they ain't.

I think there's a lot of triumphalism involved here ---- people feeling triumphant (ego) about something of which they don't know shit.
It's like going to a place like the landing beaches in Normandy, or to Auschwitz, or to Hue, wherever. You try really hard to imagine what happened where you are, but you CAN'T.

And I think there's a lot of that in this realm as well.

Too much analysis. It's good. It's history. They're pretty.
(Tree good; fire bad)

It doesn't fly but the San Diego Aerospace Museum used to have a shell of a B-36 on display back on the day. They have a great collection of locally made air planes. That means planes made by Ryan, Consolidated, Vultee, and Convair among others. An impressive number of planes really.

SDAM also has a reproduction of Ryan Aircraft's Spirit of St. Louis in flying condition built on the original specs from the old Ryan archives. The original is in the Smithsonian. A fine locally built plane.

It's hard to have too much analysis in such a grave matter.

True enough. A few years ago I saw a privately owned Mirage at an airshow. Such a beautiful machine. I thought "and the best part is that it's unarmed".

Yeah, except for the missing front window. I mean, I know they did a whole lot of side-slipping in them days, but that's kinda radical.

about 25 years ago, I was sketching the facade of a 19th century Anglican church near the lake in a Toronto suburb (st judes in oakville). as it happened this was the week of the hamilton airshow and they had guest stars from the Confederate/commemorative Air Force... specifically a B17 and B24.
Well, they came flying past with the Lanc and our local B25 and for just a minute it was 1944.

That vulcan vid was cool! I saw one once at at air show in England - it looked like a giant moth taking off!

When I was in 10th grade I had PE class right before lunch and I was out at the main grass field/soccer field/what ever and I looked up and saw a B-24 flying low and slow right over the field no higher than 100 feet up. It was a sight to see. NAS (MCAS) Miramar was a mile or so away and a lot of classic planes fly in to take part in the annual air show there.

The most impressive looking military aircraft I've ever seen flying in person remains the B-52.

I got to tour a B-17G, and a B-24J from the Collings Foundation at my local airfield as a kid. Pretty damned cool.

Aside from the aircraft I road in while I was in the military (mainly Blackhawks and C-130s, thought I did get to ride in a Huey a couple of times), I've gone up in a T-6, a T-28, a Bell 47, and a B-25J. All while shooting with a big broadcast Betacam (and the T-28 pilot did a full aerobatic routine, with barrel rolls, hammerhead stalls, etc.

During the B-25 flight, I crawled into the nose and shot from the bombardier's position.

When I was a kid, the local airport -- which didn't even have a working tower -- had things the significance (and rarity) of which I wasn't old enough to appreciate. (This was mid-sixtyish.) For example, in one hangar they were converting a B-17 into a fire-fighter. And there was a freaking de Havilland Comet -- a Mark 2 (which sort of makes all the difference) -- parked there for nearly a year. Why and by whom I'll never know.

Much later, when the place had acquired a working tower and a lively freight business, I used to rent Cessnas there on visits home. Most of the truly interesting aircraft were gone.

This past summer for the first time I flew out of there on an airliner. I was shocked to note that it was wall-to-wall freight 727s and the odd airline flight. All the light planes were gone. The bastards.

I once flew in a Comet 4. That's it. Nothing more interesting.

Renting an airplane in Canada or the US is half the price of what it costs here. Clothes are also much cheaper, so I buy lots of stuff on visits. I stay with my old friend from school Mark. A few years ago I got a brown leather jacket. Mark is a jokester, and à la @Spaceturkey when I appeared wearing it he pretended to nearly faint and said "Whoa. For a second I thought we were back in WWII."