FYI
I’ve been inside “Liberty Belle”. Sadness.
Oh no.....
This was a PRICELESS piece of history.
Oh no! There’s not that many of those beauties in flying condition anymore.
I had heard that at the upcoming Arlington (WA) Fly-in, the B-17 ‘Sentimental Journey’ will be there. I saw her once about 20 years ago at Felts Field in Spokane. Gorgeous aircraft.
Breaks my heart to have another beautiful warbird lost, but she took care of all aboard. The Fortress did her job of sacrificing herself for the crew. Sucks, but a happy ending nonetheless.
I still grieve when I see picutures of hundreds upon hundreds of B-17s and other aircraft disassembled for scrap after the war, with no thought of saving a few score for museums and posterity. I completely understand that people wanted nothing to do with the war or war machinery at the time, except practical things like jeeps to us on the farm. Still and all, such a shame we couldn’t have saved more for history’s sake.
It's one heck a lot closer to Aurora, or Naperville, than it is to Chicago, but I suppose one can't fault someone from Cincinnati for not knowing there's something other than Chicago that makes up Illinois...
What a loss. B-( IIRC, the Liberty Belle was at the Pittsburgh Air Show too.
Bringing her crew home safe, one last time :-(
Dumb me. In my zeal I forgot to say HUGE KUDOS to the pilot for bringing the pland down with no casualties. Great job. Likely, he had hundreds of hours giving tours and taking that plane around the country. Still, those huge wings couldn’t have hurt, but the praise really goes all out to the pilot who did a fantastic job of bringing the pland down safely.
Yeah, it’s sad to watch a piece of history be lost to this generation and the generations to come. I’m 62 and read and saw footage about B-17’s all my life but I never actually laid eyes on one until 2002 at a local air show. And at that show, a Navy F4U Corsair crashed and burned, and the pilot was killed.
Then there was the “Kee Bird” B-29 that sat on the Greenland ice pack since 1947 and somebody completely restored it on site in 1995 and then it caught fire and burned while taxiing for takeoff.
It’s a crying shame. But the effort to remember has to go on. I guess they’ll salvage the engines off that B-17.
RIP Liberty Belle. Long live liberty!
What a bummer....my girlfriend and I saw it at Boeing Field in April. It was gorgeous.
Glad no one was hurt.
“Queens Die Proudly” William L. White, 1943. This is one of the best books ever published on the history of the 5th Air Force in the early days of WWII in the Pacific. An absolute MUST READ for any historian . .
Very sad.
I think that is the one I saw fly over my home 2 weeks ago when it was here.
Any word on the cause?
ping
I’m glad all survived, but what a sad loss of our history. I took my parents and sons to see the Liberty Belle some years ago when she was visiting my parents’ home town. It was quite an experience for us. My parents remembered hearing the Americans overhead in the latter stages of the war when they were still under Nazi occupation. They knew at that point that it was only a matter of time until the war was over.
I knew an old fella who flew on those during the war. He used to regale me with stories of how much flak one of them could take and keep on flying. Sad to see one meet its end on a sightseeing cruise then.
Off topic, but of interest.
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