In the greater history of aviation there are stories of obscure airplanes, ones that had little impact on the course of history. Such are the cases of these B-17s that were owned or operated by one Owen F. Williams, himself now an obscure figure in aviation lore but nonetheless an important one in the path of civil B-17s in the 1950s. The histories of these B-17s are of interest to a very few. The fact that they are remarkable at all is that they survived past 1946; very few B-17s did so. Those not lost in combat over Europe or the Pacific, nor lost in domestic or overseas training or other operational crashes, were for the most part summarily scrapped at the end of the war as obsolete warhorses. That the B-17 discussed here, B-17G s/n 43-37650, existed for another decade is just a fluke and one that Williams lent a helping hand. The story of these obscure civil B-17s is of little importance in the grander scheme of things, but I document some of it here, primarily because I have the information available and the history fills in a few of the blank spots in the story of the B-17.

AAF Utilization of B-17G 43-37650

B-17G 43-37650 rolled from the Boeing Field production lines in Seattle on May 8, 1944, exactly one year before VE Day ended the war in Europe. As were many in this block of B-17G-65-BO, it was assigned to the mundane role of crew training. After processing through South Plains Field at Lubbock, Texas, it moved on to Pyote Field in remote western Texas, presumably assigned to the four-engine transition school there. It was assigned to Biggs AAF at El Paso, Texas, in August 1944, with a similar assignment. In March 1945, it was reassigned to the Combat Crew Training base at Rapid City, South Dakota, where it spent the balance of its operational use.

In July 1945, it went to Dalhart Field in Texas, most likely for short term storage. It had subsequent short assignments at Tinker Field in Oklahoma City and Harvard Field, Nebraska, both most likely paper transfers. In any event, it went to the RFC on November 7, 1945, and sent to Altus, Oklahoma, for storage and disposal.

43-37650 to Russell Field, Texas

B-17G 43-37650 sat at Altus for the next ten months. Unlike most of the stored airplanes that ended up as scrap, it was saved when it was assigned for transfer to the South Side Lions Club of Fort Worth, Texas, in September 1946 for use as an educational aid. The South Side Lions Club promptly transferred the B-17 to the Fort Worth Public Schools system. The B-17 was delivered in early September 1946 to Russell Field, an small airport located about 10 miles (at the time) south of Fort Worth. It arrived being flown by Ray Haggard and Doyle Dunning who was, at the time, the chief pilot and instructor at Russell Field.

There is a long and interesting story of Russell Field located on the excellent Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields website. In short, the airport started out in 1941 or so as a small field with turf runways and known as Singleton Field after owner J.R. Singleton. The Navy used it as an Outlying Field (OLF) for training conducted from nearby NAS Dallas. By 1945 it had three sod runways and several hangars, but not much else. At about that time, it was purchased by Buck Russell and renamed Russell Field. It remained a small general aviation airport for the subsequent thirty years until it was closed in 1976 or so. As is typical of such airports, the site is now covered by modern development and no trace of it remains.

However, for us, the airport was the home of 43-37650 for the next five years. To what extent it was used for educational purposes is unknown, but it was ‘open’ to the public while parked on the airport, with the expected damage associated with such openness as well as outdoor storage. It became an very distinctive airport marker with the airport name prominently painted on the wings.

Owen Williams Comes to Russell Field

In January 1951, Owen Williams purchased 43-37650 on behalf of his California Atlantic Airways. The civil registration of N66570 was reserved for the B-17, though as will be seen, it was never actually assigned.

The FAA registration file on N66570 is no longer with us; the FAA reports the file was destroyed in March 1979 for an unknown reason. So, what is presented here is pieced together from little clues from several sources. The record suggests that ‘ownership’ of 43-37650 was actually held by Alvin Graff of Dallas, Texas, when Williams obtained it. Graff, it turns out, sold two B-17s to Owen Williams in early 1951, B-17G 43-38322 parked at Claremore, Oklahoma, and 43-37650 here at Russell Field. The first B-17 he had obtained from Frank Abel, a surplus aircraft dealer, and it is possible the he also obtained 43-37650 from Abel also.

In any event, Graff ‘sold’ the Russell Field B-17 to Owen Williams but, as was typical in such transactions, neither the South Side Lions Club nor the Fort Worth Public Schools nor Alvin Graff actually held title to the B-17, which had been originally transferred by the RFC as essentially an educational loan. It had a scrap provision that disallowed further sale of the aircraft.

When Williams submitted his registration application to the CAA in April 1951, it was returned because there had to be a legal chain of ownership from the RFC to Graff, and there was none. The same was true for the Claremore B-17. Nonetheless, Owen Williams assigned to California Atlantic mechanics to go to Russell Field and put his B-17 back into airworthy condition. Newspaper accounts state those two mechanics spent a month working on the airplane, bringing all the needed systems back to life including the engines that had not run for five years.

Williams then arrived to ferry the B-17 to his home base at Pinellas International Airport at St. Petersburg, Florida. It is interesting to note that a newspaper article at time tells that Williams was well aware of the aircraft title issue. It relates that Williams purchased the aircraft in January 1951 for $2,000, with half of that going to the U.S. government as part of an agreement. But, then the article goes on to say that Williams would have to pay the government between $25,000 and $30,000 to “return it to commercial use.” What role Graff played in this transaction is obscure.

Newspaper accounts document that he departed Russell Field on Tuesday, May 15, 1951, with his two weary mechanics onboard. He departed with only a compass, airspeed indicator, and altimeter to help him guide the way, lacking even a radio. He landed at Mobile, Alabama, that evening and continued on to St. Petersburg the next day.

In a curious chapter of this story, the flight logbook that Williams maintained shows the ferry flight in N66570 departing Fort Worth on July 15, 1951, taking 6.0 hours of flight time to get to Florida. That same logbook page shows he flew C-46A CB-50 from Lima, Peru, to St. Petersburg on July 12-13, than returned to Lima in that same C-46 on July 20, with the B-17 ferry flights sandwiched between. It is a mystery with the specifics of the flights from Lima to Florida, then the ferry flight from Fort Worth to Florida, then a return to Lima a few days later. Numerous newspaper accounts verify the flight occurred on May 15. One can suspect that Williams was re-creating the logbook entries at a later date and confusion crept into his record. Beyond that, one can only speculate at the discrepancy.

In any event, N66570 went into the California Atlantic maintenance hangar at Pinellas shortly afterwards, and emerged in October 1951 rebuilt as a cargo carrier and ready to move on to its next owner. Owen Williams took the B-17 up for a three hour test flight on October 20, followed by another on October 24, and ferried the airplane to Miami on October 31. That is his last recorded flight in the airplane.

N66570 to Lloyd Aereo Boliviano in November 1951

Williams and his California Atlantic Airways was the supplier of the B-17s operated by Lloyd Aereo Boliviano (LAB) in the years between 1950 and 1952. He prepared and sold four B-17s (42-3360 that became CB-70; 41-24434 that became CB-79; 43-38322 that became CB-80; and 43-37650 that became CB-97). The details of the sale of N66570 to LAB were lost with the destruction of the FAA registry record, but aviation historian John Davis records that LAB purchased 43-37650 on November 1, 1951, which neatly coincides with Williams delivering the airplane to Miami the day before. Presumably, another California Atlantic pilot actually delivered it to the main LAB base at Cochabamba, Bolivia in late 1951. Davis records that it was not actually placed on the Bolivian civil registry as CB-97 until November 10, 1952. It most likely continued to operate marked as N66570 on Bolivian cargo runs in the intervening period. The problems of legal title of the airplane and its U.S. registration status went away with its export to Bolivia.

When the Bolivian civil registry was reorganized in 1954, CB-97 was reassigned to become CP-597.

Destruction of CP-597 in Mid-Air Collision

Time ran out for 43-37650 in September 1955. On September 5, CP-597 departed the Cochabamba Airport, elevation about 8,300′. It collided with LAB DC-3 CP-572 (C-49E msn 1549 s/n 42-56094) at 9,000′ within a few miles of the airport. The B-17 crashed killing the crew of three; the DC-3 managed to land at Trinidad with its crew of two and eight passengers uninjured.