As most in the B-17 world now know, the EAA’s B-17 (44-85740, N5017N) has been disassembled at Punta Gorda, Florida, and is being trucked back to Oshkosh to have required repairs made. If you are not aware, check out this news release from EAA. By the way, the B-17 fuselage was last reported heading north out of Georgia. If you see a shrink-wrapped B-17 on the freeway headed north, it’s a good bet it is Aluminum Overcast.

But seeing this news and thinking about this airplane, it is noted that it was one of the early civil B-17s, having been sold as war surplus in 1947. Aside from the occasional hiccups, like now, it’s been flying ever since. This led me to think about the three phases of B-17 disposal, the period 1946-1948 when direct sales were made by U.S. government, the period 1949-1955 when most B-17s coming to the civil registry were obtained a bit illicitly from schools and cities that were tired of war memorials and teaching aids, and finally the period from 1956-1959 when the U.S. military disposed of its remaining fleet of B-17s.

So, in this post, I’m going to look at the first period of those airplanes that made it to the civil register. But, first, I’ll mention that the first civil B-17 was not really a B-17…it was Boeing’s Model 299, the airplane that would have become the XB-17 but never did. It was only a civil airplane from its first flight on July 28, 1935, until its ultimate and tragic destruction three months later, on October 30, 1935. It carried the Bureau of Air Commerce civil registration of X13372.

Aside from that, let’s take a look at those B-17s that were sold by the RFC and WAA into the civil market in the period 1946-1948. There are not that many of them, only ten, considering the 4,000-plus surplus B-17s that were World War II leftovers. Surplus B-17s were available for purchase by the general public at the (initial) price of $13, 750. We will list these aircraft, all late-production, unused B-17Gs, and all drawn from the War Assets Administration (WAA) storage depot at Altus Field in Oklahoma. They are shown in the order they received their civil registration numbers from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), the successor agency to the Bureau of Air Commerce.

Before we get too far down the path, there are going to be those who know about such things who point to Paul Mantz’s B-17F, 42-3360, that he purchased as part of a larger lot of 475 aircraft in February 1946. Yes, this is true, but though Mantz flew the airplane probably at least three times, it was not actually civil-registered as N66574 until 1950, shortly before he sold it, so it gets pushed down the lineup.

Ten Little B-17s All In A Row

So, here is the first batch of civil B-17s in order of them being issued CAA civil registrations:

1. First out of the starting block is B-17G 44-85728. It was purchased at Altus on June 26, 1946, by Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) for the list price of $13,750. Civil registration was applied for shortly afterwards and issued as NX4600 on July 17, 1946. TWA flew the B-17 to Seattle for Boeing where, in late July and through August 1946, the airplane was converted to a passenger-carrying business transport. At the completion of the work, TWA expected the CAA to issue a standard “conforming” NC airworthiness certificate. The CAA deemed it not eligible for a number of reasons, but ultimately granted a temporary NC4600 certificate so TWA could fly company employees to Cairo, Egypt, for a conference in October 1946. Meanwhile, the Limited Type Certificate program was being developed by the CAA to allow surplus warplanes without civil certification to be issued “Limited” type certificates that addressed the very issue TWA was facing. 44-85728 received the first limited type certificate on December 4, 1946, and civil registration was changed to NL1B. A lot of work for not much gain, as the B-17G was sold to the Empire of Iran on April 4, 1947. It ended up flying for the IGN as a survey aircraft before being scrapped in the early 1970s at Creil, France.
   
2. B-17G 44-83735 was sold at Altus to Transocean Airlines of Oakland, California, on February 17, 1947, for $13,750. Application for registration was made on May 22, 1947, and believed to have been issued shortly afterwards, date unknown, of NL68269. It was converted to passenger transport, and then sold to Col. Andrea Soriano, one of the owners of Philippine Air Lines, who flew it as the San Miguel. It later went to the Assemblies of God church, and then to the IGN for survey work. It is now on static display at the American Air Museum at Duxford, UK.
3. B-17G 44-83811 was sold at Altus to D.L. Spivey of Findlay, Ohio, on May 26, 1947, for $1,001. It was one of five B-17Gs offered by the WAA by auction as individual sales of flyable aircraft. Spivey turned around and sold it to Universal Aviation at Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 15, 1947, for a reported $1,500. Application the CAA for a civil registration was made on July 15, and issued as NL5014N on July 21, 1947. It was sold again in June 1948 and became one of the four B-17s that got embroiled in illegally being exported to Israel in July 1948. It was ultimately scrapped in Israel around 1960.
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5. B-17G 44-85740 was sold at Altus to Metal Products of Amarillo, Texas, on June 17, 1947 for $750. It was one of five B-17Gs offered by the WAA by auction on May 26, 1947, as individual sales of flyable aircraft. Metal Products, sold it to Universal Aviation at Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 10, 1947. Actual registration date for NL5017N unknown but most likely in July 1947. Universal sold it to Charles T. Winters of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on August 2, 1947. It was used for cargo transport in the Caribbean for several years, was sold on to other users, one of which used it as a fire ant bomber, before it came to the EAA in 1981. It has flown as Aluminum Overcast since then, and is currently on its way overland to Oshkosh for repair work.
   
6. B-17G 44-83753 was sold at Altus to D.L. Spivey of Findlay, Ohio, on August 12, 1947, for $1,001. Spivery originally bid on 44-83748, one of five B-17Gs offered by the WAA by auction as individual sales of flyable aircraft and won the bid, but 44-83853 was substituted for 44-83748 by the WAA on the bill of sale for an unknown reason. Spivey turned around and sold it to Universal Aviation at Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 15, 1947, for a reported $1,500. Application the CAA for a civil registration was made on July 15, and issued as NL5024N on July 21, 1947. It was sold again in June 1948 and became one of the four B-17s that got embroiled in illegally being exported to Israel in July 1948. It was ultimately scrapped in Israel around 1960.
   
7. B-17G 44-83842 was sold at Altus to J. Coleman, E. Jannsen, and R. Sturges on May 26, 1947, for $1,055. It was one of five B-17Gs offered by the WAA by auction as individual sales of flyable aircraft. Application was made for a civil registration on July 18, 1947, and the CAA issued NL1212N on August 12, 1947. It was sold to the Babb Company of Glendale, California, on April 21, 1948, for a reported $12,000 It then appeared in two motion pictures before being exported to the Dominican Republic for its air force September 1948.
8. B-17G 44-83851 was sold at Altus to D.L. Spivey of Findlay, Ohio, on August 13, 1947, for $1,001. Spivery originally bid on 44-83731, one of five B-17Gs offered by the WAA by auction as individual sales of flyable aircraft and won the bid, but 44-83851 was substituted for 44-83731 by the WAA on the bill of sale for an unknown reason. After a confusing series of reported sales, 44-83851 ended up with Charles T. Winters of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Application the CAA for a civil registration was made on August 7, 1947 (before the WAA sale was recorded) and issued as NL1098M on November 12, 1947. It became one of the four B-17s that got embroiled in illegally being exported to Israel in July 1948. It was ultimately scrapped in Israel around 1960.
   
9. B-17G 44-85734 was sold at Altus by the WAA to the Esperado Mining Co. in a 423-aircraft scrap sale on June 26, 1947. Engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney came calling in November 1947, looking for a pair of B-17s, one of which was to be used as an engine test bed and the other to be used as source of spare parts. Esperado had a scrap-only restriction on the airplanes it owned, so a deal was struck with the WAA that allowed Esperado to sell Pratt & Whitney two B-17s, paying Esperado $5,400 for each aircraft, half of which was forwarded to the WAA for a scrap release. Pratt & Whitney applied for CAA registration on November 28, 1947, and was issued N5111N on December 31, 1947. The aircraft was operated with an experimental airworthiness certificate. N5111N was heavily modified as a fifth-engine test bed, test engine in the nose and the cockpit moved four feet aft. After Pratt & Whitney ended its use in 1967, it was displayed at a museum, then traded to a private owner 1990, was restored and flown. It ultimately was severely damaged in an off-field landing in 2011 and is currently being remanufactured.
10. B-17G 44-85741 was the second B-17G purchased by Pratt & Whitney under the same circumstances and dates as N5111N. This B-17 was issued the civil registration of N5110N on December 31, 1947, flown to Pratt & Whitney’s Hartford, Connecticut, base and slowly scrapped to support N5111N, the engine test bed.
    
11. B-17G 44-85507 was sold at Altus by the WAA to the Esperado Mining Co. in a 423-aircraft scrap sale on June 26, 1947. In agreement with the WAA, Esperado was able to sell 44-85507 to the Chicago Tribune Company on February 4, 1948, for $5,400, half of which was forwarded to the WAA for the scrap release. Application for registration as NL5116N was made the same day, with it being issued by the CAA on February 19, 1948. The B-17 was modified as an executive transport and utilized by Tribune owner Robert McCormick for world-wide travels. It was sold in 1952 to an aerial survey company and crashed shortly afterwards.

Thus, in summary: there were only ten B-17s, all virtually new aircraft placed directly into storage from the production plants, that were added to the U.S. civil register between 1946 and 1948. Two were early 1946 direct sales from the WAA to individual owners. Three were purchased from a scrap dealer who had to get authorization from the WAA to make the sales (and the WAA got some of the sales money). And, five B-17s were individually placed up for auction in May 1947 as flyable aircraft. All five were sold. So, ten B-17s on the civil register during the period. Of those ten, three were illegally exported to Israel in 1948 and one was exported to the Dominican Republic, also in 1948. Another was serving as a parts source to keep an engine test bed B-17 flying. And, on was sold to the Shah of Iran. Thus, at the end of 1948, there were actually only four B-17s actively flying on the U.S. civil register.

• N5017N
• N5111N
• N5116N
• N68269

Only two owners paid the WAA asking price of $13,750 for their B-17s. Three were sold for $5,400. All the rest paid in the range of $750 to $1,055, such was the demand.

With the scrapping of surplus B-17s available directly from the government completed by 1948, the source of available B-17 dried up for the civil market. Beginning in 1949, it was left to entrepreneurs to dig out obscure war memorial B-17s from schools and local communities to satisfy the slowly growing demand for B-17s in the civilian world. And that will be Part 2 of this three part series.

And, for some in-depth details about any of these civil B-17s, please check out Final Cut: The Post-War B-17 Flying Fortress and Survivors.