Lee, a commercial pilot himself, was freaking out with excitement. This is one of five things he wants to do before he dies, and it's always great to knock something off that list. We had to drive up to Mt. Vernon in a loaner van — way the heck north in Skagit County — before being flown to the Tacoma Narrows Airport.
We were flying with a B-24 (flown by a young Swedish woman, one of five B-24 pilots who still fly B-24s) and there were two old B-24-flying vets on that flight. Tears!
But we had a special vet on our flight, too.
Lee is getting Lois's signature on his $500 goatskin real bomber jacket, where he has autographs of famous aviators. Lois was a WASP back in the day, and was a test pilot for bombers. Jackie Cochran was her boss and she's met Chuck Yeager, but she's pretty great, too.
The flight was pretty incredible.
Clear skies, lots of sun, warm air. Much nicer than the weather most of our boys had to endure when they were bombing ball bearing factories. We never flew high enough to need to use oxygen masks, for one thing. And let me tell you, the landing? I have never been on a smoother landing. Never will. The bumps I felt I thought were the landing gears deploying, and I had to ask Lee if we were on the ground (can't see out the itty bitty windows). His response? "They don't let just anyone fly this thing." No doubt.
I'm a little disappointed in Lee here, because the shot I envisioned was wider, horizontal and took the scope of the hatch from the two massive guns on either side (with faux 50 caliber ammo belts). That would have been a lot better, said the one who does not make a living from taking pictures. I didn't want the glamour shot.
Anyway, I can't imagine having to aim the Norton device behind me — a sight so accurate it was removed from the planes between missions and locked away and was the first thing destroyed when the plane was shot down — while the guns were blazing. It must have been crazy loud during combat. The bombadier's hatch was pretty roomy, but you have to crunch down to get in it. The rest of the plane, especially the bomb bay, was tight (the catwalk had a big metal V coming down to hold it up; it was the width of my hips plus a millimeter). Lois was the only passenger who got to sit on a seat (in the radio room, which had two walls full of radio transmission equipment) and the rest of us were on little mats strapped in on the floor, leaning against a little mat on the wall.
Being in the B-17 gave me a better appreciation for some of the stories I've written. I even wrote one story about three men who were officers in WWII who ran missions on bombers, were shot down, survived that, evaded the Nazis for as long as possible, got caught, were hauled off to the Stalag, survived that, survived being transferred between Nurenburg and Mooseburg in the dead of winter with very little warm clothes and less food ... I just got a little taste of what it was like to be part of that story. And no one was shooting at me, and I wasn't in the freaky ball turret (which sometimes got stuck and, if you were in it when that happened and the landing gear was shot out, you were pretty much dead), so all the better.
But before I disrupt any sentimentality over the warbird, I have to say, I ran my eyes over it and took in all the rivets. They were probably all put in there by women, real-life Rosie the Riviters. It was probably tested and delivered across country by WASPs. It is a living reminder of a time when everyone contributed to the war effort, when people held scrap metal drives to help churn these planes out, when everyone did what they could to serve the effort. It was a little depressing; I could head to Target, drop $50 on crap and only when the radio came on realized, oh, yeah, there's a war on. And I'm one of the tuned in people. But then, dropping $50 on crap is considered an act of patriotism by certain officials, which is also massively depressing. During WWII, the American people didn't know the outcome would be that we would split the atom and become the world power, turning Europe on its ear. They had no idea they'd change the world. Crazy. So the B-17 is also an expression of naivete, it's the half-galumphing, half-astonishingly graceful act of an adolescent who is cocksure but totally clueless at the same time.
Maybe I'm reading too much into the B-17. And that being said:
Doesn't this look like the head of a big anime robot?
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