by Brooke P. Anderson, brooke@electraforge.com
Each year, the Collings Foundation flies several of its WWII bombers around the country and (unbelievably to me at first) sells half-hour rides on them for around $400. They tour with a B-24J Liberator (the world's only flying true B-24 Liberator), a B-17G Flying Fortress, and to some locations a B-25J Mitchell.
In 2004 and 2005, I took rides on the B-24, painted respectively as The Dragon and His Tail and as Witchcraft. Click on those two links for pictorials.
This year (2007), people were talking about the Collings Foundation aircraft in the message board for the excellent multiplayer air-combat simulation Aces High. I talked about the aircraft some, and one of the other Aces High pilots (Rabidrabbit) sent me a message asking if I was up for a flight. I told him that I was and, in terms of preference of aircraft, said that they are all excellent, but that I had a slight preference this time for the B-25 since this was the first year it was in Seattle. He agreed, and we signed up.
In the B-24 and B-17, you can roam throughout the aircraft while it is in flight (they let you do that). In the B-25, there is no good way to go from the back compartment to the front compartment in flight, so you ride in either the back or the front throughout. Rabidrabbit and I rode in the back as the front was sold out already. That was fine with me, as then I'd get to check out the waist and tail-gun positions.
Here is a pictorial of our ride on the B-25J Tondelayo.
by Brooke P. Anderson
e-mail: brooke@electraforge.com
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