Douglas B-18

Over the Holidays, I made a visit to our local aviation museum, Wings Over the Rockies. The museum is in suburban Denver and located in one of the remaining hangars from Lowry Air Force Base, which closed in 1994. The majority of the exhibits are military aircraft and date from the Cold War. I'll cover the Cold War exhibits in another post as I wanted to focus on perhaps the museum's rarest aircraft, a Douglas B-18 "Bolo" .

If you read the Wikipedia link on the plane, you'll see it was the US Army Air Corps' first-line medium bomber in the late 1930s. Only five are known to exist, none in flyable condition.

From today's perspective, when we're flying 40+ year-old B-52s, it's almost amazing to think that this plane entered service in 1936 and was considered obsolete when the US entered WWII in 1941. It was widely deployed at the beginning of the war, and the majority of the bombers destroyed by Japanese bombing on 7 and 8 December 1941 in Hawaii and the Philippines were B-18s.

The remaining B-18s were mostly reassigned to coastal patrolling and replaced by the B-25s and B-26s that bore the brunt of war service. Coastal patrolling was soon taken over by PBY Catalinas and B-24 variants. B-18s spent most of the war as training aircraft or were converted to transports. During the war, Lowry was a center for bombardier training, and this picture shows B-18s on the flight line there with a group of cadets.

Another very cool exhibit at the museum was this Norden bombsight. This was a technical marvel and closely guarded secret at the beginning of the war. I have been reading about these for ages, and this is the first I have seen. It occurred to me that this was the same type bombsight used by Steve's father who was a bombardier in B-17s over Europe during the war.

Bombers in Ft. Collins

Yesterday, Connie and I drove up to the Ft. Collins - Loveland Airport where the Collings Foundation had an exhibit of three flyable WWII combat aircraft: B-17, B-24 and a rare two-seater variant P-51. You can see the B-24 in the pic above.

For a nominal fee you could walk around and clamber through the two bombers all you wanted. No touching the P-51. For a tax-deductible fee of $425 you could take a half-hour flight in one of the bombers. We had to pass on the plane rides.

Here's a little closer view of the B-24's nose art.

This pic is taken inside the bomb bay of the B-24.

Here's a shot of the P-51. Sure wish I could have moved the orange cones a little. This is a two-seater trainer version of the plane, and I believe this is the only P-51 I've seen in person that doesn't have a bubble canopy. It's not clear in this picture, but there is a maintence technician on the other side of the plane who polished aluminum the entire time we were there.

The B-17 was taking off for one of the half-hour rides just as we got there and later I was able to take a few pictures of her landing.

The piston engines, so rare in aircraft these days, give off that distinctive throaty roar.

Here's a better view of the nose art. This is a model "G" B-17, which is usually discernable by the distinctive "chin" turret you can see slung under the nose. You can plainly see the Norden bomb sight (that I posted about here earlier) in the nose bubble.

Here's a shot inside the cockpit. I was a little surprised by how few modern instruments had been added.

Finally here's a picture of Connie in the waist of the B-17. You can see one of the two 50 caliber waist guns on the right.

Clambering through these cramped monsters gives you a whole new appreciation for the brave men (like Steve's father ) who flew them under fire.