Was very cool thing to see and hear a B 17 fly over my house.

Bill Ferris

Lunatic Member
Both Friday and Saturday afternoon at around a 1000 ft. altitude over my house.
Air show at nearby NAS Jax, FL, maybe ? :dunno:

I was outside, when I heard the sound of multiple large reciprocating aircraft engines, approaching from the North(the direction of the Naval Air Station from my house) :confused:

Anyway, it was very cool to see a 70 + year old B 17 WWII bomber lumbering along, as I had never see one in person, and in flight to boot, and over my house too, and I didn`t spill my drink either, going rapidly out into the yard to get a better look !! Yes !! :thumbsup:

Probably selling rides..
A very, very, cool experience for me !!

Sorry, no Smart Phone, or camera nearby to take a picture to share.

OKB
 
This one?
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Had that one and a b-25 Mitchell here a year or so ago.Rides were 500 to 800 dollars and I regret not going .Once in a lifetime experience.and the money went to a good cause.Many years back saw a Lancaster tooling around also but the best was a mig-15 and a f-86 sabre dogfighting right over my head when I was out fishing.
 
This one?
40483905251_6a73eea9a5_c.jpg


My dad was a B-17 Command Pilot out of England during WWII. Flew many missions, shot down over Germany, POW for a year.....until the end of the war.
That tail insignia, Triangle with a U and blue stripe was my dad's bomb groups tail sign during the war ( http://www.457thbombgroupassoc.org/ ).....here are some pics of his B-17 on one of his mission when his landing gear was shot out, had to belly land. He is second to the left kneeling next to the engine....he was 22 years old!

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Cool sighting and nice to see a website to the group. So many of them are going away as those who were there are no longer here.

Ten years ago I was approached to do a site for a WW II Carrier air group. Talking to the pilots, reading their letters, log books, and diaries is something I will never forget.

http://vf31.com
 
Very cool!

There have been a couple of air shows over the years here in San Diego where vintage WWII planes from the Confederate/Commerative Air Force make appearances.

My house is close to Miramar, and on a couple of occasions I've heard that very distinctive, different, and attention getting sound of a multi-engine prop driven plane only to look up and see a B-17 or B-25.

Stop, look, reflect - sometimes get choked up at the history.
 
Very cool. My wife's uncle was a (20 to 24 year old) navigator during the war out of England. He flew 35 missions, which many of his peers did not reach. He died last year at the age of 92. He was quite deaf during the 35+ years that I knew him. Those engines were loud and the navigator is located below the pilot ... between the engines.
 
similarly, a guy I worked with at IBM got out of a russian POW camp in 46, they fled dresden only to be captured outside berlin at relatives, made their way to the US and met up with his dad who would have been killed had he been captured...he flew 'pencils' on the eastern front. around 1993/4 time frame as his father was nearly blind he got him a long airplane ride in the hudson valley for his bday. the instructor was treating him like a senile infirm gramps until Mr Mayer informed him that he flew more miles *on fire* that he ever flew period.

but off topic, more interesting was the picture he got from a ww2 naval uncle...taken of west point,,, thru a periscope, in 1942
 
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So few left still running. That's an awesome experience, Bill.

Yes Mr. Tim, I thought so, as I was getting an aeronautical woody when she graced my sky now three days in a row.

And she graced my sky again this afternoon, and no doubt she was a B 17, as I grew up watching the 12:00 High TV series, and have the original movie, along with watching the Discovery Channel series Wings throughout it`s run through the nineties.

And being somewhat of a aircraft buff, I know that plane with it`s rather large distinctive vertical stabilizer, wing shape, and fuselage lines and at around less than a thousand feet and lumbering along, there was no mistaking what a grand old Warbird lady of an aircraft she was..
 
I have been working my way through the "Twelve O'Clock High" series recently. I have never seen a B-17, but I sure the hell know what they look like. I am all the time watching WWII documentaries. My wife says I'm nuts.

When I was a kid, fishing with my Father in the intracoastal near Avalon, N.J., We had a low flyover by a B-38. I was scared but impressed. I also had 2 Apache Attack Helicopters fly over my house, just above tree height. I thought my house was going to rattle off it's foundations. I'm scared of flying, but love aviation stuff.
 
Great old machines!

I got to climb inside a Lancaster in Nanton, AB ( south of Calgary) close to 30 years ago when they were restoring aircraft and building a museum there. You can still see those big radials running here in Norseman, single Otter's and Beavers still taking fishing groups up north from here. Sometimes you see a pair on water bombers that haven't been converted to turbo props.

I flew in a Air Force WWII DC-3 just above the tree tops because of bad weather in the 70's and even got to fly it for 15 min. at a safe altitude. Quite the experience and very stable and much more relaxing to fly compared to small single engine planes. I liked gliders also and got to fly them all thanks to the Air Cadets!
 
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And a sort of follow up..
I started remembering about when I first moved to Miami, FL. in late1973, and heard the same big reciprocating multi engine low flying window rattling sound during the next year`s summer after it had heavily rained some days before.

And sure enough there was a very low and slow silver B 17 flying patterns over South Miami, and I asked some grown up neighbor, what`s the deal with the B 17 flying back and forth over the area, and I was told that it had been modified to carry large tanks in it`s fuselage and sprayer`s on it`s wings trailing edges for spraying Mosquitos from the air !!

Talk about a bug bomb/er !!

I e-mailed my friend(who grew up there, that I had met) this morning and asked him about the aircraft type and purpose, and he confirmed what I saw and remembered..

OKB
 
I'm fortunate to have quite a few WWII era fighters and bombers fly over my house each summer during the airshow here. Mustangs, Fortresses, SuperFortresses, Hawkers, Mitchells, Bearcats, Corsairs...a virtual squadron it seems.

Plus every other year we have either the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels screaming overhead and the show is usually closed with a mock low elevation attack pass by a Warthog. The bbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaapppppppppp of that General Electric GAU-8 gun can be heard for miles.

As a USAF veteran and a guy who just likes cool machines, seeing these aircraft in person is a real treat.
 
I don't know one military plane from another, but when I lived in the flight path of Willow Run Airport, which also hosts the Yankee Air Museum, they would occasionally take this huge silver four-prop airplane out for a spin. It made quite the low droning sound when it flew nearby. Maybe @olson_jr has seen this same one?

Nothing was like seeing the Blue Angels zip over our neighborhood though, when they were on practice runs.
 
I don't know one military plane from another, but when I lived in the flight path of Willow Run Airport, which also hosts the Yankee Air Museum, they would occasionally take this huge silver four-prop airplane out for a spin. It made quite the low droning sound when it flew nearby. Maybe @olson_jr has seen this same one?

Nothing was like seeing the Blue Angels zip over our neighborhood though, when they were on practice runs.

The Yankee Air Force, out of Willow Run Airport, flies both a B-25 and a B-17 regularly, they actually offer rides for a fee.

http://yankeeairmuseum.org/fly/
 
The Yankee Air Force, out of Willow Run Airport, flies both a B-25 and a B-17 regularly, they actually offer rides for a fee.

http://yankeeairmuseum.org/fly/
Yep, then it was their B-17 I used to see:

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We see a lot of helicopter and airplane activity on this side of town--we're closer to Selfridge. Some jets were doing some sort of practice runs back in September. The copters are occasionally the military copters, but more often we'll see the Coast Guard copters flying overhead. We're not far from the USCG station behind Blossom Heath on Jefferson.
 
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