The year is 1960 and the place is Dallas. The mournful wind that sweeps across the flat plains of north central Texas whistles through the tattered control surfaces on a field of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, banging the idle rudders against their stops. The Plexiglas is yellowed and crazed, the sunbaked paint cracked and peeling, and most of the oil that can drip out of 32 dead Wright Cyclones has long since dripped onto the weeds that have grown up beneath the wings.

In 1960, these B-17s were not ancient, only 15 years old. It would be like us in 2024 looking back at a vintage F-22 Raptor build in 2009. Well, not quite the same, but in pretend world it is. They are nonetheless old aircraft, technically if not chronologically. A throwback to a much earlier time, they are ‘special,’ even if no one knew it then.

As part of the B-17 legacy, they are but a footnote. This small fleet of B-17s, actually surplus Navy PB-1Ws, spent the better part of five years falling apart in what was then the main airport for Dallas, known as Love Field. These essentially derelict and abandoned airplanes have become part of the folklore enveloping the fabled Flying Fortress. The question, then, is where those B-17s come from and where did they go?

Well, as noted above, they were all surplus Navy PB-1Ws. The PB-1W was the Navy’s first crack at a land-based, radar-equipped, airborne combat information center platform later performed by the much better-known Lockheed WV-1 (Willie Victors) that even later became the EC-121 Warning Star. The PB-1W was borne out of a need to protect the fleet from Japanese kamikaze attacks of 1944 and 1945, but it was too late to see any action. The first PB-1Ws entered Navy service in early 1946 with VPB-101, a patrol bombing squadron based at NAS Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The first PB-1Ws came to the Navy as a batch of late production Douglas-built B-17Gs specially modified by the Navy. Eventually, the USN picked up a few additional B-17Gs and ended up operating 24 PB-1Ws between 1946 and 1955. Equipped with the AN/APS-20 radar, notable with the bulbous antenna extending from the bomb bay, the PB-1W established the role of early-warning, combat control later assumed by the Willie Victors and, eventually, the carrier-based Grumman E-2 Hawkeyes.

(Commercial Message: the story of the PB-1W and companion USCG PB-1G is told in detail in B-17 In Blue, long out of print but available from Aero Vintage Books as an downloaded e-book for, yep, just $10)

After a decade of service, the remaining sixteen PB-1Ws (some were scrapped for parts to support other PB-1Ws) were retired to NAF Litchfield Park, Arizona, in 1955, and all were struck off the Navy inventory on July 10, 1956. They were offered for sale as is, where is, to anyone who wanted or needed a well-worn B-17. These sixteen surplus aircraft, all still resplendent in their once-glossy Sea Blue Navy scheme, were actually the single largest contributor to post-war supply of B-17s. Three of the B-17s were quickly sold, all for aerial survey support. One went to Kenting Aviation at Toronto, Canada (CF-JJH), and the other two (N7227C and N7228C) to Aero Service Corp, the first to become a parts source to support the second.

That left thirteen B-17s at Litchfield Park, and the whole batch was sold on December 2, 1957, to American Compressed Steel Corp. There is a bit more detail about American Compressed Steel Corp found in this earlier Aero Vintage posting. However, not many of the actual specifics of this company are known. It was an old company established before World War II, and seemed later to be based in a number of states besides Ohio, including Dallas. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s it purchased a number of surplus airplanes from the U.S. government including four other surplus USAF B-17s in 1959.

The thirteen B-17s were accidently assigned two registration number sequences, N6460D through N6471D, plus one odd ball N7726B, and N5225V through N5237V. The later sequence was finally assigned , and those numbers were painted directly over the old Navy markings.

American Compressed Steel quickly sold two of the Navy B-17s (N5231V and N5235V) to Hamilton Aircraft at Tucson, Arizona, and they both eventually ended up flying in Bolivia and Peru, respectively, where they both later crashed.

However, the remaining eleven B-17s were ferried from Litchfield Park to Dallas-Love Field in Texas in late 1958. They were parked on a field near Dallas Aero Service on the north side of the airport and made available for sale. And, three were sold almost immediately. Two (N5227V and N5228V) and were sold to California owners with thoughts of converting them to crop sprayers and one (N5234V) was sold to a Mexican aerial photography company.

Within a few years, though, the remaining eight became a unique and distinctive landmark even as they sank further and further into disrepair–and into the mud. While the elements took their toll, harsher still were the vandals who prey upon unprotected airplanes. Within a few years, the blue B-17s were eyesores and on the verge of being good only for scrap.

At that point, the caretaker of the aircraft was Henry Seale, owner and operator of Dallas Aero Service. Henry acted as the local agent for American Compressed Steel and handled the subsequent sales of the aircraft. And three more were sold, at least on paper. In February 1960, the Marson Equipment and Salvage Co. purchased N5230V, N5233V, and N5237V. However, they remained parked in the weeds at Love Field and did not go anywhere for nearly two years. In September 1961, Marson sold the trio of B-17s to Aero Union, the air tanker company then based at Anderson, California. Shortly after the sale, a crew of mechanics and pilots arrived in an Aero Union B-25 to rebuild the B-17s to ferry condition. They left Love Field before the end of 1961 and all three enjoyed long and successful utilization as air tankers for the following fifteen years. These three are actually the only surviving PB-1Ws from the Dallas-Love fleet, and actually the only three surviving PB-1W veterans after the tragic loss of ex-PB-1W N7227C in a mid-air collision in November 2022.

That left five of the now derelict PB-1Ws available for purchase. Then, in the fall of 1961, John Crewdson came calling and purchased two of the B-17s on behalf of Columbia Pictures for use in the filming of The War Lover that depicted the exploits of an Eighth Air Force bomb group during the war.

In detail, the two B-17s, N5229V and N5232V, were transferred to an American Compressed Steel subsidiary, Aero-American, which then sold the aircraft with the mysterious Gregory Board facilitating the deal. Board’s company, Aero Associates of Tucson, Arizona, rebuilt both derelicts in record time, equipped them as wartime B-17Gs, and arranged a ferry flight of the two and one other Aero American surplus USAF B-17G, N9563Z, to England in October 1961 for the filming. There is quite a bit out there about that series of events, mostly based on Martin Caidin’s Everything But The Flak book, some of which might have actually happened. Sadly both of the surplus PB-1Ws ended up being scrapped in England at the completion of the filming.

So, that left three of the surplus and quite derelict PB-1Ws available for purchase. Along then came Von Carstedt of Long Beach, California, who purchased the trio in January 1962. Von Carstedt had plans for the three (N5225V, N5226V, and N5236V) and got two of them to Long Beach, where they were both modified as sprayers/air tankers. N5236V, however, had been damaged way back in 1958, presumably from a landing incident upon arrival at Dallas that damaged the wing tip and two engines. It ended up being embroiled in a lawsuit and never left Love Field. Of the eleven PB-1Ws that arrived in 1958, it was actually the only one scrapped on site and was reportedly gone by 1963.

And that is the short version of the stories of the B-17s of Love Field. There is more to the story, much of which can be found in Final Cut: The Post-War B-17 Flying Fortress and Survivors, which contains the individual aircraft histories of all the civil B-17s, including the eleven that were parked on a field in Dallas.