A Ride on Witchcraft

[Thorlifter]

That's fantastic Glenn. I have to admit I'm a whole lot jealous.

 

[Gnomey]

Great shots Glenn! Looks like a great flight.

Gary certainly looks like he is having way too much fun...

 

[Crimea_River]

Excellent stuff. Some day.....

 

[T Bolt]

Here's a few interior shots I took wile we were crawling around the B-24 before the flight. We could use a picture reference section in the modeling section. I took a lot more pictures like this which would be very useful to someone detailing the interior of a B-24 model. I know I could have used them when I was working on Booby Trap in the Heavy Hitters GB.

 

[Crimea_River]

Awesome.

 

[meatloaf109]

Nice!
(But I seriously hate you both!... Not really,... O.k., kind of.... jealousy is a hard thing to get over. But your brother,... now I really hate him.)
Post more pictures!!!

 

[Airframes]

I'm not jealous.
And if you believe that, you'll believe anything !!!
Great pics Glenn. In the third from last shot, is that the area behind the nose wheel bay?

 

[T Bolt]

Yes it is Terry, taken from the door in the forward bulkhead of the bomb bay looking forward just before I crawled through to the bombardiers station. The bright lighted area is the open wheel nose bay with the nose gear mounting framework above. The flat floor to the right is where you crawl to get to the nose. The flight deck is the ceiling above and at the very left of the frame you can just see the edge of whet I believe is the auxiliary power unit. Both Monogram and Academy wrongly had a bottom half bulkhead behind the nose gear opening. As you can see there is nothing there all the way down to the bottom, only a beefed up side frames at that location. Either they just got it wrong or they added it so they could have something easy to mount the nose gear strut to.
I'll try to get more pictures up later.

 

[Airframes]

Thanks for the explanation Glenn. Looks like a real assault course down there, and must have been hell in an emergency!
I'd have no chance even getting into that area, let alone reaching the nose - in fact, I think probably 50% of the aircraft would be impossible for me !

 

[syscom3]

TBolt, glad you got a ride in it. I had my ride back in 1995 when it was known as "Golden Gal". I have my video of that posted somewhere in the forum.

Did you like the view from the tail gunner position? How about how noisy the waist gunner positions were? And how cramped the nose compartment was.

The highlite of my ride was when we dropped down to the deck over the Catalina Channel and buzzed a sailboat. Priceless!!!!!

 

[Gnomey]

Excellent shots Glenn!

 

[nuuumannn]

Very very cool Glenn and Gary! I love those internal detail shots. You should be grinning from ear to ear.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Simply AWESOME Glenn and thanks for sharing.

 

[evangilder]

Great stuff, Glenn! Congrats. Now that you have had a chance to ride in one in peacetime, can you imagine the guys that flew hours in those, getting shot at by enemy fighters, dealing with flak and the hazards of formation flying with a bunch of them occupying the same piece of sky? It sure does make you appreciate what the greatest generation did, doesn't it? It is amazing that any of them still have their hearing too.

That's one of those life experiences to tell you grand-kids about. 8)

 

[wheelsup_cavu]

TBolt, glad you got a ride in it. I had my ride back in 1995 when it was known as "Golden Gal". I have my video of that posted somewhere in the forum.

Did you like the view from the tail gunner position? How about how noisy the waist gunner positions were? And how cramped the nose compartment was.

The highlite of my ride was when we dropped down to the deck over the Catalina Channel and buzzed a sailboat. Priceless!!!!!

I'll bet the sailboat captain might have had a different invective to describe the experience.


Enjoyed the pictures Glen. 8)
I was crawling around in witchcraft when she was at the Lyons museum a few months ago. Wish I would have had the cash to take the flight on her too.


Wheels

 

[parsifal]

man, thats awesome, everything. Thanks Glenn. The bird just rocks....

 

[GrauGeist]

Great stuff, Glenn! Congrats. Now that you have had a chance to ride in one in peacetime, can you imagine the guys that flew hours in those, getting shot at by enemy fighters, dealing with flak and the hazards of formation flying with a bunch of them occupying the same piece of sky? It sure does make you appreciate what the greatest generation did, doesn't it? It is amazing that any of them still have their hearing too.

That's one of those life experiences to tell you grand-kids about. 8)

Add to that, the temps were 40 below (F and C), they wore bulky heated gear and relied on oxygen masks!

 

[T Bolt]

I can't imagine crawling around in there at 30,000 and 40 below dressed it all that heavy flight gear with an ox bottle to boot. No wonder they were all kids in there late teens and early twenty's. I could never do it at my age.

I still have more pictures of the B-17 and P-51 I want to post, I just haven't had the time to sort through them yet. Hopefully after the holiday weekend.

 

[Geedee]

If its any consolation, Glenn now has lock-jaw from all the smiling !

Yup, was great to meet up with Glenn and his 'bruv. They are deffo two cool guys and it was a distinct pleasure to be able to be with them on their first '24 ride. I was able to get 'em upto the cockpit (that's normally out of bounds) and they had a quick tour before the gen public where let loose on the inside.

I've attached a few pics from screen-grabs from the go-pro footage.

Glenn, pm me your home addy and I'll get the footage I took, onto a couple of dvd's out to you.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Excellent shots Glenn and Gary! Like everyone else, I'M JEALOUS!