Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, July 09, 2006 at 10:19PM :
In Reply to: OT posted by Kaegi on Sunday, July 09, 2006 at 3:14PM :
I grew up on my dad's war stories. He too was a B17 navigator in what he called "the big war". 8th AF, 457th bomb group, 748 squadron. They called their plane the Big Gas Bird. Luckily, unlike Mr Foster, "the bird" was never shot down, and he never had to use his silk evasion map, which I still have. I may be biased because I grew up in a Boeing family listening to my father's stories of the "flying fortress", but it sure seems to me that the B17 was the Powerwagon of aircraft; no frills, noisy, not very fast, but if you had to go to hell and back, and carry a heavy load besides, that's the rig you wanted to go in.
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