Collings Foundation Tour 2018

On Thursday, October 25th I was working in my yard, cleaning up the debris from the latest storm when an unusual sound grabbed my attention. Nothing else sounds like a radial aircraft engine, especially a lot of them. Passing by not far to the North was a B 24 Liberator and a B 17 Flying Fortress, headed Southwest toward Greenville, South Carolina. It was two of the four vintage aircraft that make up the Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour. They weren’t due to arrive until Friday but bad weather was on the way so I guess they decided to fly in in front of it.

If you have any interest at all in historic machinery, this is an event you won’t want to miss. Accompanying the two bombers mentioned above are a B 25 Mitchell medium bomber and a TF 51D , a two seat trainer version of the Mustang. Where else can you see these famous aircraft together at the same time?

Rides are available on all four aircraft and walk through tours are offered between flights on the B-17 and B-24. You can find information about the aircraft and prices by visiting www.collingsfoundation.org. 

If you have deep pockets, the Mustang is the obvious first choice for anyone considering going for a ride. The Packard-Merlin V-12 engine turns out 1,450 horsepower that moves the Mustang at a maximum air speed of 440 miles per hour. Since this is a trainer version, the passenger seat has full instrumentation and functional controls. Once airborne, you can actually fly this iconic World War Two fighter. 

For a more modest fee, you can catch a ride on the Mitchell. Not a fighter like the P-51, but still an impressive performance aircraft. Powered by two Wright R2600-92 Cyclone radial engines it has a top speed of 272 miles per hour. Best known for its role in the Doolittle Raid, it was able to launch with a full load of fuel and bombs from the deck of the USS Hornet , and that was before the day of steam catapult assisted launch. During WW-2 it saw service as a Medium Bomber and in the Ground Attack role. In the Pacific Theater it was used extensively to attack Japanese shipping.  

The Collings Foundation has painted their B-17 in the war time markings of a plane that flew 140 combat missions as part of the 91st Bomb Group, 323rd squadron that the crew named “Nine O Nine”.  That aircraft survived those missions and brought all of its crew home safely, only to be scrapped after the war ended. This aircraft, affectionately known as serial # 44-83575 rolled off the assembly line at the Douglas plant at Long Beach , CA. in April 1945, too late to see combat in WW 2.  It may have missed the war, but it has a story of its own that’s every bit as interesting as the Nine-O-Nine. Lets’ climb inside and look around while I recap that tale. 

The Air Corp accepted delivery that same month and assigned it to the Air / Sea 1st. Rescue Squadron where it was used for long range search missions. Following that tour of duty it was transferred to the Military Air Transport Service where it hauled cargo until 1952 when it was assigned to participate in one of the strangest chapters in American history, Operation Tumbler - Snapper. 

From 1945 until 1962 the Atomic Energy Commision and the Defense Nuclear Agency were lighting off atomic weapons like some overgrown kid with a box of cherry bombs on the Fourth of July. A total of 235 above ground, or atmospheric, tests were conducted during this period. Tumbler - Snapper was a series of tests or shots as they were called, that were conducted at Yucca Flats in the Nevada desert in April, 1952. One of the many experiments was designed to measure the effects of nuclear blasts on parked aircraft. To that end a total of 28 aircraft were parked at various ranges from ground zero and nuked three times. This B-17 was one of them. 

I won’t go into all the high strangeness that went on out there in the desert. That would take several books to cover. If you are interested visit  www.dtra.mil and search Operation Tumbler - Snapper, enough documents will pop up to keep you busy for quite a while, many of them available in PDF for download. Makes for some very interesting reading.

After the tests, this B-17 sat in the desert, glowing in the dark at night for 13 years until it had “cooled down” enough to be sold as scrap.  It takes a lot to stop a B-17 and this one wasn’t about to quit yet. It was purchased by a firm called Aircraft Specialties Co. and incredibly, restored to flying condition. It spent the next 20 years fighting forest fires as a fire bomber.  The Collings Foundation bought it in 1986 and returned it to it’s wartime design. With the exception of down time for another rebuild, It has been touring the country with the other Wings of Freedom aircraft ever since.

Sources:

www.collingsfoundation.org 

www.dtra.mil