Owen Williams and his California-Atlantic Airways company owned or had involvement with at least seven civil B-17s in the years between 1948 and 1961. This post takes a look at the first B-17 obtained by California-Atlantic Airways, which was B-17F 42-3360 in July 1950. Williams purchased the airplane from famed Hollywood pilot Paul Mantz.

However, because it is a Paul Mantz airplane, and I have a whole website dedicated to Mantz and his later partner Frank Tallman, and their company Tallmantz Aviation, I decided to do a deep dive on B-17F 42-3360. Rather than duplicate pages, I will thus offer readers this link to that dedicated page for the B-17F.

But, I will call attention to the photo seen below which depicts, as far as I know, the only available photograph of N67974 while operated by Owen Williams.

Owen Williams can be seen standing third from the left. The circumstances surrounding this photo are unknown, as are the identities of the others standing with Williams. He operated the airplane for California Atlantic Airways only from July 1950 through October 1950, when it was sold to Lloyd Aereo Boliviano (LAB), a major cargo and passenger airline serving domestically in Bolivia. However, he remained as a contract pilot flying 42-3360, which became CB-70 in Bolivian service, for another two months, through mid-November 1950. All told, his logbook shows he flew the B-17 for 355 flight hours in Bolivia, primarily between the cities of Cochabamba, Trinidad, Riberalta, Santa Cruz, and La Paz.

Williams had a history with LAB. After he organized California Atlantic Airways at St. Petersburg, Florida, in February 1949, he began supplying LAB with pilots and aircraft, primarily Curtiss C-46 Commandos. He spent the better part of 1949, 1950, and 1951 flying C-46s and the B-17 for the cargo airline. Besides flying cargo, he also did training of Bolivian pilots for LAB. The California-Atlantic Airways contract with LAB ended on September 14, 1951, as did his involvement with B-17F 42-3360.

Once again, check out the linked webpage for the complete story on this B-17F, the first operated by Mr. Owen F. Williams.