seems like a lot of airplane stuff lately but it is what it is, lol
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brother calls me a couple of weeks ago all excited and i am guessing whats he bought now. last time was one of them new crotch rocket mustang's/vert with the big power. that lasted for 1 summer and 2 speeding ticket's so i am guessing another bike. nope not even close, lol. he starts with, do i remember the old tv shows with the old bombers in them like 12 o'clock high and another 1 or 2 and i say, yea vaguely why. well i just bought 2 tickets for us for a ride on 1 of those old bombers and he was all wound up about it. seems like we are going for a ride on 1 of those old b-17's this saturday as radio room/gunners which means at the 2 side windows with the machine guns hanging out of them from the peterboro airport. i don't travel as much anymore and over the years i have flown in a lot of different aircraft both big and small but this one has me a little wound up about it also.
here's our plane for this saturday
i had to ask him, how come we are not sitting in on of the gun turrets either upper or lower and he tells me those seats sold out quick at about 500.00 a seat more--lol thanks bro, i will take what you got-lmao
his wife tells me the plane got there a couple of days ago and he has been there nightly going over the dam thing, her words. lol this should be a grin, more pics to follow next week.
Congratulations Shag,...Enjoy the ride. Picture yourself at 17 years of age,...sitting in a gun turret of that beastie,..behind the 19 year old Captain of the ship,...on an outing to Berlin in 1944. Can't imagine what some of those young lads were thinking during those trips.
Congratulations Shag,...Enjoy the ride. Picture yourself at 17 years of age,...sitting in a gun turret of that beastie,..behind the 19 year old Captain of the ship,...on an outing to Berlin in 1944. Can't imagine what some of those young lads were thinking during those trips.
i couldn't imagine that wayne, truthfully. we all like to think we have or had the gahuuna's to do something like that but in reality we would just never know until it's our turn to go. in todays world you would be sitting at a control computer on the other side of the world controlling a drone to do the same job as one of these did. it somehow wouldn't be the same would it?
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"if you are not the lead dog, the view is all the same"
Congratulations Shag,...Enjoy the ride. Picture yourself at 17 years of age,...sitting in a gun turret of that beastie,..behind the 19 year old Captain of the ship,...on an outing to Berlin in 1944. Can't imagine what some of those young lads were thinking during those trips.
That IS sofaking COOL -
I watched those shows when I was a kid ; Combat ,12 O'clock High.
Your a lucky fellow Rick!!!!!
junior
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Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. HL Mencken. 1919.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." George Orwell 1984
well that was definitely something i was glad i can add to the memory bank. S.O.B. them tv shows weren't really showing the reality of being in one of them things and we were told that before we loaded on. on tv you got the impression of a lot more space than there is. our take-off seats with the radio controls was right behind the bomb racks which were right behind the ****pit. to get to the ****pit you pretty much walked sideways between the bomb racks on about a 10-12" ramp. once in the air we got to take our positions at the side windows with the 50cal guns out each side. if in the day you had to be on the guns there wouldn't be hardly enough room for each gunner to be shooting directly out to the sides. man it was tight, maybe 6-7ft side to side. forget about getting into the belly gun turret, maybe an 18" hatch opening and to get into the tail gun position you crawled on your hands and knees then on your belly for 4-5ft and that didn't happen, lol. to get into the nose where the navigator-bombardier, and a nose gunner, sat you pretty much had to be a contortionist and that didn't happen either, lol. those guy's loaded from a hatch ahead of the pilots. here are some pic's i got and bro got a pile more, lol
- bro at his take-off radio control position
the path between the bomb racks to the ****pit
the bomb rack
the view from the radio room to the side guns. that post is the axis for the belly gun and it was tight to get around
the X you see is the hatch opening to the belly turret
view from side gun window. these were wide open back then, not plexiglass
a couple of other planes there. maybe a dozen in total
the ride and the experience was something for the memory bank for sure. but this encounter was something that brings true meaning to the expression, it's a small mucking world. when we got there and looking at the different planes there was an f-18 fighter there also with a lady in uniform talking to the public. i had to ask her if she was assigned to this plane and her answer was yes, then i asked her if she knew the 2 kutryk brothers, one a new astronaut and the other flying the painted up f-18 for the year to different air shows. she says yes i do and gives me a surprised look. now she gives me a real looking over and tells me she is mathew's better 1/2 who is flying the painted up one and i tell her that we have met before at the funeral for mathew's father in vegreville ab about couple of years ago. then i told her i was mathew's aunt rose's other 1/2 and then it hit both of us. i told her i didn't recognize her in uniform and she said she didn't recognize me with whiskers on my face and we had good talk about family etc. i send a pic to rose that she is here and rose sends back her name, hillary, and that she is a f-18 pilot also, it was her plane for christ's sake. what a small freaking world, LMAO.
-her plane
his plane
both the brothers together
i really should of asked, who took the picture? what a small world
