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My memory goes just so far.That's very Interesting Bill. I hope I have as good a memory when I reach your age!
It was the best partThe landing Bill? Tell me that landing was part of your routine.
That period was special and remains vivid in my mind. Wish I could remember other things as well.That's very Interesting Bill. I hope I have as good a memory when I reach your age!
In our positions with the exception of the ball and tail gunners which were in the waist area. Both got in their positions after take off. The tail gunner put his gear in the tail position before take off.Bill, where did yourself and the rest of the crew sit on take off?
Yes. During State side training we took off and landed in the radio room of the B-17This was while you were based at RAF Molesworth?
I am not surprised the bomb bay doors froze. At mission day breakfast I avoided coffee. Like your father, I was 19 so my kidneys could handle the punishmentVery cool. My dad was in the USAAC 11th AF and stationed in Alaska when the Japanese attacked the Aleutians. He was a 19 year old and volunteered just after Pearl Harbor. He was a radio operator/gunner on B-17s. He told me that on his first mission all the crew peed in the bomb bay just before take off and froze the bomb bay doors closed. They had no navigational aids so during bad weather they would head to Mt. McKinley as a fix. They could dead reckon to their base from there. We are spoiled these days with GPS, but back then there were no good maps of most of the Earth. Keep the stories coming. My dad has past without telling me much about his experiences during the war so it is good to hear yours as I am sure they were very similar.
I can believe itThis comes from Martin Caidin's book, "Flying Forts", and refers to the problem that the Britrish had with their B-17C's which had been converted to the British "Fortress I" with poor results:
"There had been one problem plaguing the British which, since it never showed up on the American Fortresses sent to very high altitude, mystified the Boeing engineers and AAF specialists assigned to B-17 development. RAF crews had complained, on enough occasions to make the matter one of alarm, that at high altitude the bomb-bay doors would jam. There was never a pattern to the jamming. Before takeoff the doors would cycle properly. Everything checked out. Then at high altitude with its subzero temperatures, the doors refused to open.
'We went out of our minds trying to get a fix on it,' a Boeing engineer told the writer. 'But we could never get the same kind of problem that seemed to be giving the British fits. Then we had a chance to talk directly to one of our people who was assigned to England as a technical representative on the Fortress I. When he heard how we were trying to solve the problem of the jammed bomb-bay doors, he stared at us in disbelief. Then he doubled up and roared with laughter.
'It turned out the British had already solved their problem. You know what it was? It didn't have a damned thing to do with the Fortress or its electrical system or its bomb-bay doors. It seemed that while the airplane was climbing out to altitude the crewmen took the last-moment opportunity to relieve themselves. Some of them urinated into the bomb bay because there's a slight opening where the doors meet. And when the plane climbed to where it was anywhere from thirty to eighty degrees below zero, you'd better believe those doors were frozen solid...'"