On January 24, 1943 four B-17s left Pyote Army Air Base for Kirtland Field to take part in production of the movie Bombardier.
There was one B-17E and crew from each of the 19th's four squadrons. Two of them - 41-2438 and 41-2669 - had flown combat missions from Mareeba with the 19th Bomb Group the previous year. The other two aircraft were 41-2594 and 41-9180, which were never sent overseas.
There are six B-17Es in the murky still above, so at least two others were involved.
It's a long, long time since I've seen the movie, and possibly the B-17Es are its only redeeming feature. There's a DVD around, but I can't vouch for the quality.
Dear Steve,
The movie was just on Turner Classic Movies about 2-3 weeks ago!
The B-17Es used in the film are few and mostly at the end, flying combat missions at night, which made ANYTHING difficult to see.
The aircraft mostly shown in the Bombardier School scees are B-18 Bolos, 1 of which belly-lads when the brother of the lady whose inherited (from her dad) flying school which was taken over as a test case for bombardier schools (a VERY young Eddie Arnold [Green Acres, The Longest Day, et cetera]is too frightened to bail out and another student takes the controls and manages to belly-land it after the autopilot has frozen and Randolph Scott has had the crew bail out. I THINK the number on the aircraft was "14".
Hope this helps!
Warmest grateful regards and best wishes,
Dan Katz
PS - do you - or does ANYONE - have access to "Fortress In The Sky"? There's a color in-flight photo of what turns out to be a B-17B atop two adjoining pages, and I seem to recall that the plane-in-group number was visible. Dik Shepherd emailed me a photo I'll try and post that may be of this same aircraft. The aircraft in Dik's photo has "2B" visible. I have some other photos, 1 of which appears in Freeman/Osbourne and looks like the 2nd number is an "0". These appear to be 3 photos of the same aircraft, and I'll try to post all 3 if possible.
I need to know if the plane-in-group number on that "Fortress In The Sky" photo was 2nd or 7th Bomb Group I'll have to email you these photos to post, and maybe YOU can help figure them out!
