B-17 Scrapping in germany

[terveurn]

Three interesting photos - all I believe show B-17's post WWII in German scrap yards.

Two of the B-17 are half-half ships, should not be too hard to ID

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254933394458?h ... SwUHpgbsmx

https://www.ebay.com/itm/265105872258?h ... SwZFNgYlmv

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254841375796?h ... SwkVBgCqPb

[Second Air Force]

I'm glad you posted those, and it brings up a question that's been nagging me for years...... Is there any photographic or other documentation of the scrapping operations that were conducted in Europe? I've seen a few photos of B-26s, P-51s and B-17s but not many. There was also a fairly large scrapping program in Italy, with quite a few War Weary B-24s meeting their end there.

[terveurn]

The scrapping operations photo history was pretty limited. Except for the grand tour of Kingman the majority of these operations was pretty much done behind closed doors. For the ZOI, majority of the scrapping operators did not want the unwashed wandering around (both for insurance as well as theft).

As far as Europe, it's a hit or miss proposition -- I can find some scrapping operations in Italy in the official folders of the 15th AF, Germany is usually from these type of personnel albums (same with abandoned crashed combat aircraft).

I have only found one photo of the B-17's at South Plains (before they all were flown to Kingman for final storage / scrapping)

South Plains AAf.JPG