Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Weather forces B-17 bomber to land in Winona
 Tour guide Chris Bhend, left, explains the tracking system to a Goodview police officer on Monday. The World War II vintage B17, named the "Sentimental Journey", landed for a brief time at the Winona Airport due to bad weather on its way from Eau Claire, Wis., to Waterloo, Iowa. The plane, known as a "flying fortress", was built in 1944 and is owned by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. (photo by Katie Derus/Winona Daily News) |
It was low clouds, not hostile flak, that caused a WWII-vintage B-17 bomber to make an unscheduled landing at the Winona airport about 2 p.m. Monday.
The “Sentimental Journey” was en route from an air show in Eau Claire, Wis., to an exhibition in Waterloo, Iowa, when it encountered low clouds and bad visibility. Pilot Bob Blue said the 64-year-old four-engine bomber was flying under visual flight rules, which require maintaining both an altitude of 1,000 feet and visual contact with the ground. The plane and crew were on the ground in Winona for about two hours before resuming their flight.
The plane is owned and operated by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force and is hangared at the museum in Mesa, Ariz.
The Commemorative Air Force was formed by a group of Texas aviators in 1957 to preserve the vanishing aircraft flown during WWII. The CAF is headquartered in Midland, Texas, with branches in 26 states. The Minnesota Wing is based in St. Paul, and the Lake Superior Squadron flies out of Duluth. With 157 aircraft, the Commemorative Air Force maintains it is the world’s eighth largest force — and the only one under private ownership, totally staffed by volunteers and funded through donations.
The “Sentimental Journey” is one of about 50 intact B-17s remaining of the 12,971 built between 1940 and 1944. Of those 50, only nine are still flying, said crew member Bob Morrill of Mesa, Ariz. Nearly half of the planes produced were lost in combat, most over Europe. Of those that survived the war, the majority were drained of gasoline and chopped up for scrap, he said.
The plane that landed in Winona rolled off the assembly line in late 1944 and saw service in the Pacific in 1945, doing photo reconnaissance and as a search and rescue aircraft. In the 1950s, it
gathered air samples during atmospheric nuclear tests. In 1959, the plane was sold to a civilian corporation and put into service as a firefighting aircraft. The retired warbird was acquired by the CAF in 1978 and spent the next six years under restoration.
“Parts are hard to come by,” Morrill said.
The plane is “about 95 percent authentic” to the day it went into service, Morrill said. Certain adaptations, including up-to-date radar and communications equipment, have been installed to meet FAA regulations and for passenger safety, but are “hidden so people don’t see it.”
Morrill said the “Sentimental Journey” visits about 60 U.S. cities every summer, offering ground and flying tours to visitors. Each flight carries six passengers and four crew. With operating costs running $3,000 per flight hour, the $425 fare for each passenger means each flight just about breaks even, Morrill said.
“It’s a memorial to all the fellows who fought in WWII,” Blue, a retired airline pilot from Cyprus, Texas, said of the aircraft. “It’s quite an honor to fly.”
“There were some awfully brave men who went up in them,” Morrill, an eighth-grade history and English teacher during his time on the ground, said of the aircraft preserved by the CAF. “Seeing these planes close up, people realize what they faced. It makes it real for them.”
- For a photo tour of the interior of the B-17 'Sentimental Journey' click here.
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