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Post by Jeff Shannon on May 11, 2009 8:24:14 GMT 9
Here are some pics of the Branson, MO Air Show May 9, 2009 The airport is not even open to the public yet, it officially opens May 11, 2009 s166.photobucket.com/albums/u119/Egressace/Branson%20MO%20Air%20SHow/Click on the link and then you can click on the individual pic to make it larger. My camera is not the greatest for "Flying " pictures so all I have right now are from the static display. It does take 15 second movie clips and I will up load some of them and post them in the next couple of days. Friday we had some pretty good storms roll thru here and I have part or should I say most of a tree laying in my back yard, a couple of friends are coming by this week to help cut it up. We picked up what we could today. So it will take me a couple of days before I can up load the movies
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Post by dude on May 11, 2009 12:32:53 GMT 9
Nice shots. A few years back I attended an airshow at Nellis and they let the public go inside the B-17 and check it out. Can you still do that?,
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Post by Jeff Shannon on May 11, 2009 22:52:42 GMT 9
Nice shots. A few years back I attended an airshow at Nellis and they let the public go inside the B-17 and check it out. Can you still do that?, They did after a while but when we first got there they didn't. the other thing I thought was odd was they were refueling the B-17, B-25 and the C-47 while spectators were walking around, some were even smoking! :nono we had a good time but never got inside the B-17 as by the time they opened it up the line was loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. we will do it again next year as they had 50,000 or so the first day and about the same yesterday.
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Post by dude on May 12, 2009 0:39:16 GMT 9
Better luck next time. Hopefully not to spoil it, but a couple impressions when I went through. 1. The bombay is smaller than I expected. Don't know why, just is. Guess from watching all those 12 O'Clock High episodes. 2. They wouldn't let us go back past the waste gunners to the tail gunner position, but standing in the top turret was a hoot. 3. With the exception of a few nav straps-ons required for flying in today's airspace, the cockpit appeared pretty authentic. 4. I never knew how the ball turret was attached to the aircraft. This was a suprise. OK now for a little WWII trivia. During the 11th century the Jesuits tried to bring Christianity to Japan. Throughout most of the country they had limited success and in some cases had their heads handed to them (literally). The exception was one Japanese village/town where 90% of the populuation converted. And the city was....... NAGASAKI
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Post by Jeff Shannon on May 12, 2009 2:40:42 GMT 9
I almost forgot to mention, as my nephew and I were walking around by the Air Force recruiting tent we came across a couple of the Thunderbird maintainers, I was talking to them about the show and then the one looked at me and said "were you deployed to Bahrain in 96?" I said I was and he said he was there at the same time with the unit out of Hill. He was a Airman Basic at the time and now he's a TSgt with 1 year to go with the T-birds then he hope to be stationed at Hill or Alaska (he's from there). I was the "acting" 1st Sgt for the Logistics Group while we were deployed there.
Small world, it's it??
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Bullhunter
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Post by Bullhunter on May 12, 2009 3:50:39 GMT 9
Yes it sure is !!!!!!!!!
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Post by adart on May 12, 2009 5:15:10 GMT 9
We had a air show in Iowa last year and got a chance to tour the B-17 Sentimental Journey and to take a ride in it. Was the chance of a lifetime and enjoyed every minute of the flight. :god_bless_usa
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Post by dude on May 12, 2009 12:41:15 GMT 9
We had a air show in Iowa last year and got a chance to tour the B-17 Sentimental Journey and to take a ride in it. Was the chance of a lifetime and enjoyed every minute of the flight. Wow! Sign me up for that ride!
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Jim Scanlon (deceased)
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Post by Jim Scanlon (deceased) on May 13, 2009 8:07:51 GMT 9
My first experience with a real War Bird was in Ogden, Utah during WW2. Most of my early life I went to Ogden in the summer to stay with my grand-parents. I was asthmatic and my doctor uncle told my mother to get me out of San Francisco during the summer. San Francisco is not the friendliest place for an asthmatic in the summer. It is a season of fog, mist and not the greatest summer weather. Mark Twain has been credited with saying; "The coldest winterI ever spent, was a summer in San Francisco". So, to Ogden I went, riding on a Southern Pacific train. On 23rd street, a couple blocks east of Washington, Boulevard, was where the National Guard Armory was located. It was not a fenced property, but had one big building and a lot of lot space. On the east side of the building, in a side yard, sat my magic carpet. It was the fuselage of a Douglas B 18 Bolo. It sat on a cement base and was a joy to behold. It had no guns, radios or bomb sight. It did, for some reason, still have some instruments and the yolks. All of the glass was intact and there were even the bomb bay doors hanging loose. There was no fence or other way to keep people out. The Guard didn't seem to care if anyone climbed in to the fuselage. I suppose it was the summer of 1943 that I first ventured inside that wonderful machine. On Saturday mornings several of us kids would walk downtown to go to the pictures. There were the requisite serials, maybe Flash Gordon, several cartoons, some even in color and the main feature, generally a western, with "B"stars like Charlie Starrett. On the way home it was our time to climb aboard the Magic Carpet. We would go under the plane and climb up in to the fuselage through the bomb bay and take a ride. We would pretend we were flying missions from England to Germany, in a B17, to bomb the Krauts. The only experience we had to draw on was war movies. So, we would take different positions and play Air Corps. I was one of the younger kids, so seldom got to fly the plane. We seemed to be impervious to the bullets coming at us from the 109's and 190's, who were doing their best to shoot us down.We, however, were perfect marksmen. No Nazi plane ever got away from out mighty .30 Brownings. We were great. The yolks would move, but being there were no wings or empenage, nothing moved but our imaginations. We were all heroes, if only until it was time for us to go home. Home was 2331 Eccles, just a few blocks, so could get to the B18 on days other than Saturday. The B18 was a derivative of the Douglas DC 2 and first flew in 1935. It saw some service in WW2, but mostly as a patrol plane. As I look back, I wonder how the crews managed to do their jobs in the planes of WW2. Like the Bolo, the B17, B24 and others, were mostly ribs holding a thin aluminum skin with a row of rivets. There was no heating or cooling system. The fuselages were not pressurized, until the B29, there were lots of places for air to enter, in particular from the gun ports. They were extremely cold at altitude and hot at low altitude in North Africa and the South Pacific. They vibrated all-over and the engines made so much noise that it was hard to talk to each other, even with the intercom, if it was working. The auto-pilots didn't always work and there were no boosted flight controls, so the pilots would be worn out by the time a mission ended. There were thousands of them and some missions were called "Aluminum Overcast", because there were so many birds flocked together on the way to their target. They were tough and could take a lot of punishment. Some landed without parts of wings or tails. I remember a picture of one B17 that was almost sliced in half behind the fuselage gun positions. It was sitting on it's tires, all three of them flat, on a grass strip in England. There are not many flying to-day. I saw two of them at The Royal War Museum, Air at Duxford, last time we were in England. I wasn't able to climb in, as the crews were giving tours and flights to WW2 veterans. I thought they deserved a look much more than I did. It was a magic day for those old RAF warriours. Why anyone with any sense would get inside one of those flak targets, I don't know. But, I know I would have given anything to have been able to fly a mission to Berlin and drop some bombs, hoping to get Hitler. I wasn't, so this 8 or 9 year old boy had to be satisfied with flying on my Magic Carpet. It was a time of wonder and a time of joy I wouldn't trade for anything. Jim
:god_bless_usa
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Post by dude on May 13, 2009 10:44:23 GMT 9
Great story Jim. Your B-18 sure beat that old hacked up washing machine without a door that we had as kids to fly in. Been to Ogden many times. I think the old armory might be a parking garage now. But the creamery (Farrs?) is still in business and you can still get some of the most decadently delicious ice cream you've ever had at their store.
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