So this is what my dad was talking about.
Cramped. Noisy. A little smelly when those growling radial engines first crank up. But the B-17 got the job done.
The Experimental Aircraft Association's restored World War II bomber "Aluminum Overcast'' is in Superior this week for public ground and air tours.
It was in a bomber like this one that Nick Myers' Greatest Generation moments unfolded.
On Tuesday, 66 years after my father became all too familiar with this Boeing product, I was getting my first flight in the plane that changed his life and that has, for decades, held so much mystery and honor for me.
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The takeoff was smooth as the pilot George Daubner eased the plane off the runway at Richard I. Bong Airport, over the Superior Harbor, Lake Superior and then eastern Duluth and Lakewood Township. The 30-minute flight offered an incredible chance to walk through the plane that is restored to nearly original form -- complete with racks of bombs in the bomb bay, behemoth two-way radios with tubes and dials, and belts of .50 caliber ammunition near every gun.
The hatch over the radio room was left open for a sun-roof-style view in the 160 mph breeze.
Cables run along both sides of the fuselage, the link between the pilot and the ailerons and rudder. It requires a little muscle to make this plane react.
The nose cone is perhaps the most interesting place on the plane; where the bombardier had a bird's-eye view of everything out and below, including enemy aircraft and anti-aircraft shells exploding.
That's the view Ray Frones had over Europe 64 years ago. The Northland native and Duluth resident was a bombardier in a similar B-24 Liberator, flying 32 missions. The 87-year-old tagged along on Tuesday's media flight -- his first on a World War II plane since 1947.
"I had the best view of anybody,'' Frones joked of his role in the nose of the bomber. "I wasn't really scared at the time. We were too busy. I got scared once we were back on the ground.''
Frones, who was wounded by shrapnel on his 31st mission, said he has mostly good memories about his service, but that Tues-day's flight was more enjoyable.
"There's nobody shooting at me,'' he said.
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By today's modern jetliner and military aircraft standards, the B-17 looks little like its Flying Fortress moniker. But at the time it was among the fastest, biggest, highest-flying and best-defended bombers in the air.
Older folks might recall the plane as the star of "Twelve O'Clock High," both the 1949 Gregory Peck movie and later a TV show. And younger folks might remember the 1990 flick "Memphis Belle," which also starred the Flying Fortress. By the time that movie was made, there were so few flying B-17s left that producers had to use computer animation to replicate the huge air missions that included hundreds of bombers at once.
Nick Myers, who was a summer resident of Grand Marais for many years and who died in 2000 at the age of 84, was one of the many casualties of the U.S. Army Air Forces' 8th Air Force.
He trained in Texas and Washington and joined the 306th Bomb Group at a base in Thurleigh, England. While still awaiting the arrival of their B-17 (the crew had crossed by ocean liner) and anxious to get into the air, Nick volunteered to take the place of a wounded co-pilot for a veteran crew for one mission.
It was a fateful decision. On his very first mission, in December 1943, flying with a crew he had never met, 2nd Lt. A. Nick Myers was shot down while bombing a German U-boat submarine base along the coast. He was never sure if it was anti-aircraft shells from the ground or German fighter planes that did the plane in, but there were plenty of both to go around.
Nick managed to get out of the plane as it spun to the ground (half the 10-man crew did not) and, although he broke his back and several ribs in the parachute fall, landed alive on German soil. He spent the next 18 months in Stallag Luft I in Barth, Germany, a POW and guest of the Nazi party.
He liked to joke about the Army losing a lot of money on his training and how much the airplane cost Uncle Sam. Yet, despite such a harrowing experience, he always spoke fondly of the B-17.
Now I can, too.
