Fine Lines

Hanging Out the Warsh

(Bill Schock, the publisher of The Falls City Journal [NE], was a bomber pilot during WWII. After his airplane was shot down, he was captured by German soldiers and put into a prison.)

I recently resumed a somewhat torrid love affair that ended rather disastrously 56 years ago, although the memories have lingered on.

To dispel any rumors which might quickly surface, it was strictly platonic. It was with a B-17 (Flying Fortress), the workhorse of the mighty 8th Air Force in World War II. My affection for the four-engine bomber wasn’t singular. I’d guess that everyone who ever flew one was similarly infatuated.

My emotional fire was quickly rekindled at the Lincoln (NE) Airport recently where the EAA Aviation Foundation of Oshkosh, WI, had brought the restored B-17, “Aluminum Overcast,” to give rides and to open it for walkthroughs by aviation and history buffs, as well as old WWII types in search of nostalgic boosts.

Bruce Morehead, San Jose , CA , son of John and Amy Morehead, who does his flying as a serious hobby, was eager for a ride in the historic bomber, and he flew us up to Lincoln .

Getting back to my love affair, it began as a blind date. Some of us had just graduated from advance flying school in New Mexico and considered ourselves very hot pilots. We were ordered to Boise , ID , where we thought we were going in to B-25’s (the twin-engine plane in which Jimmy Doolittle and his airmen made the surprise attack on Tokyo early in the war). The Army Air Corps needed B-17 crews to fill the ranks in England which were rapidly being depleted by heavy losses in bombing missions over Europe . We were a perfect fit for the co-pilots so badly needed.

So, hello, B-17! And she and I became an item, as they say today. I thought about that first meeting as I walked and crawled my way through the restored and well-traveled “Aluminum Overcast” that Friday morning some days ago. It seemed like an awfully big airplane, both then and now.

I sat down in the jump seat they gave me behind the two pilots, stowed for takeoff. Right off the bat, they “buzzed” the Seward Airport . I smiled to myself. It brought back very vividly the most (and maybe only) fun I ever had in the four-engine bomber. It was in August 1943, and we had just picked up a new B-17 in Grand Island to fly overseas to England to become a replacement crew in the 8th Air Force.

The day before we left, we took our new plane up to calibrate the instruments. What better place to calibrate instruments than over Falls City ? We “buzzed” Falls City for about 45 minutes, going east and west, then north and south, then west to east and south to north. What a blast! Even after 56 years it was fun to recall. I figured it was one heck of a goodbye to my home-town.

The B-17 and our crew went through some tough times together over Germany , but the rugged bomber always (well, nearly always) brought us back to our base in England . On a mission to Anklam , Germany , she kept us airborne through nearly three hours of continuous fighter attacks at 20,000 feet. But it was her last hurrah. The battle damage to her was so extensive that she never flew again. But she had brought us home, badly wounded as she was.

On another day and another circumstance, a B-17 gave up her life for us. Between missions over Europe, we had been on patrol over the North Sea in search of Royal Air Force crews which had been forced to ditch in the sea after a night raid over Germany . The Air Force left us out too long, and when we were recalled, the east coast of England was “socked in” by murky weather as darkness had begun to set in. We were awfully low on fuel, and when through the murk we spotted a landing strip of a fighter base under construction, we tried to land. After two unsuccessful passes when the landing strip came barely visible, only when we over the middle of it, we knew we just had to set down. We were all but out of gas. We missed most of the runway and went bounding along on grass. Suddenly, a small creek appeared out of the gloom. The plane had just enough speed to bounce across the creek. When it came down, the wheels sank and stuck into a very soft Brussels sprouts field, and our hectic ride ended. It gave us a terrible jolt! The B-17 became perpendicular, the four props also sinking into the muddy field. Everyone scrambled out through the cockpit windows and escape hatches before the bomber settled back down on the ground.

While the 10 of us were standing there, shaking in our boots and thanking our lucky stars, a terribly upset British farmer came running up and began berating us for ruining part of his Brussels sprouts field. Sympathy was nowhere to be found. The B-17 again had been good to us, and all of us were still in one piece. But for that plane, the war was over.

Then there was our last goodbye to another faithful airplane. We were on the way home from bombing a German fighter aircraft factory at Marienburg , East Prussia , on Easter Sunday when our plane was hit by flak over the Schleswig Peninsula (where Germany meets Denmark ). She was burning badly, and we all knew it was time to desert her. On our 25 missions, we had seen too many bombers explode in mid-air after flak or fighter hits. On automatic pilot, the B-17 flew a level course long enough to give us time to parachute out. She had been faithful to the last. Then she exploded.

One of her favorites was killed in his parachute when the Germans kept firing at us. Another lost an arm from the flak hit in the ball turret. Two more were wounded so badly they spent most of the rest of the war in German hospitals. The “lucky ones” of us finished out the war in prisoner of war camps.

So my intimate “affair” with the B-17 ended that Easter Sunday in 1944, but I knew I would never forget her. She had been too good to me.

Then, presto! Fifty-six years later I was privileged to sit in the pilot’s seat once again at the Lincoln Airport . The adrenalin reached flood stage. Corny? Absolutely!

You know what? I’m sure she acquired a new suitor in Bruce, my young compatriot, who looked admirably at her when our 30-minute flight was over. A very experienced old head at matters of the heart, I could tell right off he was smitten.

I’m not jealous. How could a guy who knew her in better days keep from loving her, when she had been so faithful in times long ago, and when she sat so majestically on the runway, her four big props taking man-sized bites out of the hot and humid Lincoln air in anticipation of another quick trip into the wild blue yonder?

Exactly as I remembered her. Beautiful. Simply beautiful!