October 15, 2020 - B17 Bomber in Perryville

 A very unusual event today in Perryville. A B-17 bomber from WWII landed in Perryville to refuel. The bomber is the "Yankee Lady" and is owned by an aircraft museum in Michigan. They stopped for fuel in Perryville because the pilot had been in Perryville some time back for three months waiting for a jet to be completed at Saberliner. He looked at their flight plan for today and said they were going to get fuel in Perryville. They let the city know about a week ago that they would be here so that people could come and get a look at the plane. They were out "barnstorming" because all the air shows have been cancelled and they want to exercise these planes. Here is a picture of the bomber as it circled the airport for a photo op.

I learned today that the Perryville airport runway is longer than the one in Cape Girardeau and it is the fifth longest in the State of Missouri. The Perryville Airport was built as a training location for WWII. The runway was lengthened over the years to accommodate jets landing to be worked on at the old Saberliner plant which was located here before they went belly up. Now the buildings are occupied by Western Star Aviation which refurbishes jets.

Here is a picture as the B-17 was landing and then one as it approached us on the taxiway to refuel.

While it was fueling we got to walk around to look at it up close. Here is a close up of the cockpit area.

Notice the gunner position in the nose of the plane and another on top. The one on the top was obviously the most vulnerable. I wonder how gunners got assigned to their spots. There were crew members in all these gunner positions as the plane landed. It has machine guns all around. Here is one that hangs below. In this spot the airman was especially subjected to freezing cold at high altitudes.

Here is a picture of the machine gun sticking out on one side.

Here is a closeup of the front gunner spot. It had to be freezing there as well with only a layer of plexiglass between you and the outside temperature.

Here is a picture of the rear gunner position. A lot of plexiglass there as well.

Here is a picture of the crew fueling up the wing tanks. I don't know how much fuel it holds but I know they put 300 gallons in one wing.

Here is a picture of the inside where the side gunners were located. You will notice there is absolutely no insulation anywhere. Everyone had to be freezing when at altitude. I would think long missions would be uncomfortable with only the sling canvas chair on the right to sit in but at least they could stretch out a little, unlike the front, rear, and bottom gunner positions. 

What was astounding to me were the B-17 statistics they had on a plaque inside the door. Here is a picture.

It is a little hard to read but there were 12,731 B-17s built which flew 1,440,000 missions. 79,265 crewmen were lost and they dropped 2,700,000 tons of bombs. Think about that. Those planes had to be on constant missions and clearly most didn't return if 79,265 crew members were lost in action since there are only about eight crew members per plane. An interesting morning.