B-17s That Made It Home

[Bruzilla]

Different airplane, different story, different country. Beg to differ. Flat doesn't matter.

More likely same airplane, exaggerated story, different country, bad retelling. Nothing new here. Anytime something weird happens, the story gets passed around and down, and people retelling it make changes to it. The main clues are exaggerations that don't work, like the cup of coffee at the navigator station. The B-17s didn't have cup holders, and making a "sort of a rough landing" on a grass field would have certainly caused a cup of coffee to go flying off the radio operator's little table... and that's if the crews used coffee cups, which they didn't. Also, there's just no way for an aircraft to make a landing, come to a stop, and sit "idling" without someone taking power off the engines, applying the brakes, and then setting the parking brake. This is why DeBolt's aircraft could make a successful landing but ended up ground looping. Like the coffee cup, these are just flourishes someone over the decades added to the story to make it sound cooler.

But, if you can find documentation of this ghost landing in England, I would love to read it.

 

[patrick66]

How a pilot-less aircraft would land (other than a remote-controlled drone) would be like this:

In 1989, a MiG-29 took off from a Polish airfield with a Russian general at the controls. He overflew East Germany and West Germany, where he bailed out, in order to seek asylum. The MiG continued to fly for another couple of hundred miles, when it ran out of fuel. Like a giant lawn dart, it crashed into a Belgian farmhouse, killing the homeowner.

 

[Photon440]

Here's a similar story, but the Russian General was really a Colonel, the plane was a Mig-23. No asylum, just a malfunction. Still, same uncontrolled landing though.
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash

 

[Cranky]

Here's a similar story, but the Russian General was really a Colonel, the plane was a Mig-23. No asylum, just a malfunction. Still, same uncontrolled landing though.
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash

USSR paid $685,000 in compensation to Belgium. Colonel Nikolai Skuridin expressed his condolences to the family of the victim.....

I bet not a dime went to the family.....

 

[Bladecutter]

pics are 07...some work has been done since. back on rubber, runs, matched motors @ 1/2 TBO, 4000 TTAF, all logs complete......this big assed taildragger is easily as fast as any single engine fighter, unless it has been turned into Reno unlimited, built to cruise @ 41,000 ft in a 7000 ft cabin....any direction to look for a home would sure be appreciated. This is #14 of 17 built....the 500's are NOT PV-1 conversions

 

[Photon440]

View attachment 255296View attachment 255297pics are 07...some work has been done since. back on rubber, runs, matched motors @ 1/2 TBO, 4000 TTAF, all logs complete......this big assed taildragger is easily as fast as any single engine fighter, unless it has been turned into Reno unlimited, built to cruise @ 41,000 ft in a 7000 ft cabin....any direction to look for a home would sure be appreciated. This is #14 of 17 built....the 500's are NOT PV-1 conversions

Nice article on the 500 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.zoeller/LTSRootntl2/Howard_500.html

 

[71airgrabberRR]

Here is an incident that happened right here in the Good Old USA. Back in 1970 a F-106 fighter landed itself in a cornfield after the pilot ejected.....................

http://www.f-106deltadart.com/580787cornfieldbomber.htm

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The pilot ejected after getting into a spin. He bailed out at approximately 14,000 feet. The plane recovered on its own and made a nice belly landing in a field in Montana.............

Minus the pilot.

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The B-17 was my favorite WW2 bomber. Rugged as hell, like our old Mopars. They brought many crew members back that wouldn't have made it in another plane. Most people don't know, but the German Luftwaffe started ramming tactics against American bombers towards the end of the War. Initially our intelligence thought it was caused accidentally by a German pilot after he had been killed and the plane accidentally flew into the bomber.

I had several family members and friends of my Dad who served in the Army Air Force during WW2. The Liberator guys said their plane would carry more ordnance at a higher altitude, faster speed and for a longer distance. This was true. But then the other guys who were in the B-17's shut them up when they said, Yeah, but we get back HOME !!!!!

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God bless these guys.

The 8th Army Air Force suffered more casualties that the entire US Marine Corps did during WW2.

Many people don't know this either:

The medium bomber crews had to complete more than 25 missions before they could rotate back home. I think it was 35 and home.

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and they flew through the same hell as the Big bombers did.........................

 

[Bruzilla]

We had one not too long ago that involved a T-28 Trojan out of Pensacola. The student and his instructor were flying the kid's first fam flight, and a freaking bird hit them right in the windscreen, killing the student and almost taking the instructor's head off. The instructor tried to get the student out, but couldn't reach his harness from the back seat. The plane was so damaged the instructor pointed it out over the water and bailed out.

Not long after the instructor bailed, the "dead" student woke up, avoided freaking out, and managed to get the plane back to NAS Pensacola all on his own.

By the way, just so you know this stuff still happens, this is a pic of a VP-50 P-3C that was flying an aerial demonstration and dropping parachutists on Pago Pago. The pilots failed to notice a tram cable that ran up the side of a nearby mountain. The plane struck the cable, which sliced off the vertical tail.

And that wasn't the worst for VP-50. On 3/21/1991, two of their P-3Cs were participating in an exercise off California. They were doing a turnover, which is when one aircraft and crew flies out to relieve another that's coming back. They are supposed to maintain a minimum of 1,000 ft vertical separation but some reason they were at the same altitude and the Big Sky/Little Airplane theory failed them. They collided and went into the Pacific killing 27 guys.

 

[patrick66]

Here's a similar story, but the Russian General was really a Colonel, the plane was a Mig-23. No asylum, just a malfunction. Still, same uncontrolled landing though.
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash

That story has a couple of holes in it. First, an aircraft is NOT put on autopilot at takeoff like that, He supposedly bailed out at 150m (450 ft), where the aircraft climbed to cruise altitude by itself??? Not. He had to have climbed significantly higher for the aircraft to have maintained cruise altitude. I guarantee it did NOT fly across Germany at 150m.

Here is a scary sight - a C130 Hercules firefighting aircraft had BOTH wings fall off of it, killing all three on board. This was in California a few years ago:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&mid=18BD5BB783AFE647B0A818BD5BB783AFE647B0A8

 

[Bruzilla]

That C-130 crash was a serious eye opener at Naval Air Systems Command when I was there. As a result of that wing failure, we decided to start scanning all P-3 wings for signs of fatigue cracks and everyone was shocked by the findings. About a quarter of the P-3 fleet was flying with unsafe wings and had to be grounded.

The fix was to pull low-hour birds from reserve squadrons and move them to active duty squadrons, retire the worst winged birds, and move the rest to the reserves.

 

[Photon440]

That story has a couple of holes in it. First, an aircraft is NOT put on autopilot at takeoff like that, He supposedly bailed out at 150m (450 ft), where the aircraft climbed to cruise altitude by itself??? Not. He had to have climbed significantly higher for the aircraft to have maintained cruise altitude. I guarantee it did NOT fly across Germany at 150m.

Here is a scary sight - a C130 Hercules firefighting aircraft had BOTH wings fall off of it, killing all three on board. This was in California a few years ago:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&mid=18BD5BB783AFE647B0A818BD5BB783AFE647B0A8

I can't comment on the 'holes' in the story, I wasn't actually there. Honestly, I hadn't even heard about it before now. But there's an interesting recording of the chase pilots who describe the missing canopy and ejection seat, and the eventual crash.
http://wn.com/1989_belgian_mig-23_crash

 

[miller]

More likely same airplane, exaggerated story, different country, bad retelling. Nothing new here. Anytime something weird happens, the story gets passed around and down, and people retelling it make changes to it. The main clues are exaggerations that don't work, like the cup of coffee at the navigator station. The B-17s didn't have cup holders, and making a "sort of a rough landing" on a grass field would have certainly caused a cup of coffee to go flying off the radio operator's little table... and that's if the crews used coffee cups, which they didn't. Also, there's just no way for an aircraft to make a landing, come to a stop, and sit "idling" without someone taking power off the engines, applying the brakes, and then setting the parking brake. This is why DeBolt's aircraft could make a successful landing but ended up ground looping. Like the coffee cup, these are just flourishes someone over the decades added to the story to make it sound cooler.

But, if you can find documentation of this ghost landing in England, I would love to read it.

From now on I'll keep my damn mouth shut. Keep your smilies.

Read that 'story' too many years ago...never find it.
The 'rough landing' could easily been just a bounce, or two. Of course no cup holders. But plenty of places to slip a cup into, to keep from spilling, since just the viberations of the plane would move stuff around.
The throttles backing down by themselves...very common...that's why there's adjustable throttle tensioner, that the driver could loosen, or tighten, as they wanted. Have plenty of hours in a B-25 (no, not as pilot), and would see the throttles back down, by themselves. Also plenty of hours on a radial engine test stand, always having to bump the throttle, because of back downing. Sounds like a good idea. End of story!

 

[Bruzilla]

From now on I'll keep my damn mouth shut. Keep your smilies.

Read that 'story' too many years ago...never find it.
The 'rough landing' could easily been just a bounce, or two. Of course no cup holders. But plenty of places to slip a cup into, to keep from spilling, since just the viberations of the plane would move stuff around.
The throttles backing down by themselves...very common...that's why there's adjustable throttle tensioner, that the driver could loosen, or tighten, as they wanted. Have plenty of hours in a B-25 (no, not as pilot), and would see the throttles back down, by themselves. Also plenty of hours on a radial engine test stand, always having to bump the throttle, because of back downing. Sounds like a good idea. End of story!

Seriously? You just can't admit this is a BS story? I'm sure you have seen throttles back down on their own... i know I never have in 2,500+ hours of flight on P-3s, but if you say you have I'll take you at your word, but have you ever seen them fall all the way back to idle? And how about the brakes? Did they apply and set themselves??? How about the landing gear? Did they lower themselves?

By the way... have you ever landed on an unprepared grass field? That's not gonna be a bump or two. That's a lot of bumps!

And seriously... a coffee cup on a B-17? You make many landings with a cup of coffee sitting around?

Sorry to disappoint you, but this story is BS. But again... if you can provide just one source that documented it back then, I would love to read it.

 

[FIRST R/T]

I lost an older cousin in a 17 during the ball bearing plant raid over germany . He was the navigator ..... My uncle never really got over the loss of his son ......

 

[71airgrabberRR]

My dad had two first cousins who were killed in B-25's. One was named Thomas Smith who was a pilot. He was listed as missing presumed killed when his plane crashed into the Sulu Sea by the Philippines on April 8th, 1945 on a routine flight training mission. Per the crash report they were flying low level practicing "skip bombing" which was a technique where they actually bounced a bomb off the surface of the water then the bomb would slam into the side of a ship.

The other cousin was named Thomas Bricen who was a top turret gunner in a B-25 J model. He was killed when their plane named "Evora" was hit by a German 88MM gun over Italy on a bombing mission on Oct. 3rd 1944. The port side engine took a direct hit and was blown completely off the wing. The wing caught fire and the plane went down in flames from an altitude of 15,000 feet. I'm sure if the were alive they had a minute or so to think about the end from that height.

One parachute was observed to exit from the plane. It was on fire and failed shortly after opening. It was probably the tail gunner.

Tommy and his crew are still buried in Florence, Italy.

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Check out a web site called "the Mount Zion Historical Society". They have a list of all of the veterans from my Dads hometown area in PA. These guys will be listed there with a nice article and a picture of them.

My Dads on there too.

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This is Thomas Bricen sitting next to his top turret on one of the B-25's he flew in.

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This is Thomas Smith. He was never found.

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I lost an older cousin in a 17 during the ball bearing plant raid over germany . He was the navigator ..... My uncle never really got over the loss of his son ......

Sorry for your loss.

 

[Bladecutter]

AirGrabber....never knew about the F-106....kind of a Happy ending that no one fell victim and looks like bird may have been salvageable/rebuildable. The middleweights...first pic is A-20? the rest look to be Martin B-26's. Both types Dad had lots of time in as test pilot...had pic of Him in an A-20 inverted on deck...tip of vertical was about where Art Scoll would get His for cutting the ribbon....sang Hi-praises of A-20's....pretty hot & much more forgiving, tolerant of error than the B-26...but for balls to the wall performance, the short wing B-26's were the hard *** to follow......the fighter kills that many wore back that up....wolf in wolfs clothing...... and the return rate ...as a kid in Texas...i used to go to the *Confederate* AF shows and pylon racing was part of the plate..B-26's & Doug A-26's were in the mix and both those birds turned as tight as the 51's, 38's, F-8-F's etc. PC be damned, when CAF came into being, it was born Confederate Air Force....damn political liberals.

Yeah....B-24's could not sustain damage.

 

[Bladecutter]

Clay Lacy's "Connie" unlimited

Bruzilla...not trying to change topic, but You mentioned Your Connie ride to me....this is Clay Lacy' unlimited 1049, dubbed Red Baron...The unlimited DC-7 was Super Snoopy...i need to reread the article...but the DC-7 ran Mojave...Reno wouldn't allow
www.adastron.com/lockheed/constellation/racer.htm
Lacy' DC-7.."Super Snoopy" i correct myself about speed...1970 Mojave 1000...finished 6ixth, was reported to have been lower than single engine unlimiteds..ran 355 mph, avg. 325....were 15 pylons set up...had 1500 gals fuel left at race end...used just under a 100 gals of Pennzoil...R-2800's
vintageairphotos.blogspot.com/2011/11/super-snoopy.html

 

[Chargen]

Very Cool ! Thanks for sharing

 

[Bladecutter]

Chargen....i don't want to mess up the topic of Bruzilla's thread here...i was noticing Your location in Wisconsin...French settlement originally? I notice You are a pretty Rare Bear here, showing 59 posts in 5 years.....indicative of critical thinking, restraint & discernment......topic of this thread is definitely worthy of one of those few posts You've made.....God & Everyone else Bless the Unsung Heroes Who went to War for Us.....A Gentleman named Ed Buck, Who went to my Church here just passed a couple mos ago....He had His 50 Mission cap & then some extra...B-17's...lost airplanes but not one Crewmember....He also flew P-51Bs, somehow connected with the "Tuskeege Airmen"...the Black Heroe squadron (My fav Mustang w/ razorback). Ed showed me His War log...He brought a couple Birds back that are befitting of this Thread God Bless You, Edwin Buck...You'll always be remembered and Honored

 

[miller]

Wasted time, and did a search. Only thing found, but tells where the story is found...(simply copied from a forum post)...not much else found.

I remember reading about it in Martin Caidin's book:

B-17: The Flying Forts

a B-17 lands perfectly at an RAF airbase, does the whole pattern as well, comes to a full stop, but nobody is observed coming out of the airplane. Emergency crews climb aboard to find not one single person inside the airplane, no trace of any bodily fluid.
What they do find are pilot logs, copies of radio transmissions. From the looks of it, the pilot stated that the plane was heavily damaged, the crew was badly hurt, but the plane itself was not damaged at all. Let alone, from what was seen, it was flying and landed itself!