B-17 Flying Fortress Waist Gunner Stations
by Don Struke
Title
B-17 Flying Fortress Waist Gunner Stations
Artist
Don Struke
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
NOTE: The Fine Art watermark visible in preview windows is not on any print.
Here you are in the waist section of a B-17, looking forward, showing the two waist gunners' stations (staggered so they won't bump into each other - early B-17s didn't have this combat-proven detail). The big yellow tank in the center is the oxygen supply for the ball turret gunner below, whose position was vulnerable not only to enemy guns but to the possibility of entrapment: If the turret could not be put in the right position due to damage, the crew man could not get out.
Of the more than 12,000 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses built, nearly a third were lost in combat or other crashes, This beautiful survivor, one of a very small number of flyable B-17s in the world, was photographed at the annual (in June) Mid-Atlantic Aviation Museum air show in Reading, Pennsylvania, a terrific event. She is "Yankee Lady", a B-17 G-110-VE serial number 44-85829, built by the Vega Division of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation at Burbank, California and delivered to the USAAF on July 16, 1945. She went to Dallas, Texas for modifications, and in September 1945, with World War Two over, was placed in storage at South Plains Field, Texas along with other brand new B-17s.
Her service included more than ten years with the Coast Guard for air-sea rescue (carrying a lifeboat under the fuselage), air survey work, as an air tanker to fight forest fires and apply pesticides, and, in 1969, she was flown to Hawaii to appear in the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora." In 1986 she was bought by the Yankee Air Force, flown to Willow Run, Michigan, and began a nine-year complete restoration done almost entirely by dedicated Yankee Air Force volunteers who generously donated their time, talents, and financial resources. She finally flew again on July 13, 1995.
Uploaded
July 20th, 2011
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