Not to argue anything the participants here have posted about this tragic accident, you might all be interested to know that the B-17 that does a gear-up landing in the first few minutes of the 1940s movie "Twelve O'Clock High" was deliberately expended for the filming. The airplane had been previously operated as a drone to collect air samples in nuclear weapon tests, however a pilot flew it for the belly landing in the film.

See "The Real Twelve O’Clock High" by By John T. Correll

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0111high/


PC

Some of these flying WW11 aircraft would not even be around if it was not for millionaires that have gone out, found them and spent millions making them airworthy again.

Some of the B17's were used as spraying aircraft, some P51s came from South America.

The Memphis Belle was saved by the city of Memphis and then left to rot. Thankfully, it has now been completely restored by the Air Force Museum.

We cannot save everything, but thankfully, people have stepped forward and restored these aircraft so future generations can see them fly.

The farther we get into this culture of people who are increasingly disconnected from reality, the more important it is continue to operate historic machinery that requires human interactions to manipulate. There is no more important time than now to keep this stuff running. If not, in a few years the importance of keeping the stuff around will diminish and the number of people willing to care enough to keep them around will also drop off. Something Ed also doesn't understand is that it is largely volunteers who keeps this historic stuff around and volunteers aren't going to be happy to sit and just look at it. Operation is the reward for their labors.

Now there will always be a pristine B-17 at the Air Force Museum and a few other locations for the rivet counters. But if you want to experience what it must have felt like when a squadron of B-17s flew over France on a bombing run, you just HAVE to have some flying. We are NOT preserving history if we are denying people such experiences.

There is more to this preservation thing than metal, paint and glass silently sitting in a building. Operation is by far the highest and best use for historic equipment. As long as there are sufficient examples in museums, operate the rest.

To be fair, in the 1940's, after the war, they were literally cutting up B-17's and B-29s with just a few hours on them, probably just a test flight and a ferry flight to the storage yard where they were scrapped. From what I understand, a good number of the existing flying aircraft were never in combat, but came from the fields of new surplus aircraft being cut up.

The crash landing of the B-17 in the movie "Twelve O'Clock High" is a good example of what Jim Boyd used to call "The Highest Possible Use" for an artifact. The surplus radioactive bomber had no future other than scrap but it exists forever in a few seconds of memorable film.

PC

The same could be said for vintage automobiles.

Basic gasoline engine operation and repair are no longer taught in schools where students are taught to use computers to diagnose problems. Unfortunately, Henry Ford did not have the foresight to install USB ports in Model Ts.

This is the fourth B-17 destroyed since the late 80s. The two most recent were the one this past weekend, and the Collings Foundation B-17G which was lost while trying to land on at least one bum engine.
In that case, a long history of questionable preventative maintenance came back to bite those poor souls on board.
In the 90s, I rode on their B-24J and immediately after takeoff, they shut down the number 4 engine. I asked why and the crewman laughed and said it was running very rough and the FAA requires 'all four turning' on takeoff. He said they realized they could have it running as they lifted off so that they could get to the next stop where they wanted to either do engine work or an engine change.
So, years later when the same group crashed their B-17, knowing this and watching other similar groups (including the CAF) do some questionable things since the 1990s, I was far more saddened than surprised.
As for all the WW2 airplanes I've flown on and gotten 'yoke time' in, almost a third of them are no longer around and in each case, someone died.
I've encountered many of each over the years who have said it'd be better to preserve these planes in museums. I attended a conference on the subject in DC many years ago and there were many advocating grounding them, so as to preserve them for future generations. This was right after the CAF had just suffered a number of accidents (look up online to see how many fatal crashes of WW2 airplanes have happened in the last 30 years or so; it might come as a surprise to some).
I have always thought of it as to the total amount of existing planes of that type as to whether they should be flown.
For example, there's a group in PA that has been restoring a P-61 'Black Widow' to flying condition, and there are only four of them left in the world (one of which is in a museum in China). The USAF Museum and the air and space museum at Dulles have the other two. One could make an argument (and several have, including vets and historians) that the type is too rare to risk 'lawn darting' a quarter of all the surviving examples just so that a 'handful of rich/connected people' ever get airborne in one and is only seen in the air at a few east coast airshows.

I believe a B-25 was deliberately crashed (and destroyed) for the filming of Catch-22.

JR

No, that was a basket case they found in Mexico where the airfield acenes were filmed. They flew a B-25 past the actors with an engine with smoke added, skidding past, then stopped smoke and pulled out of frame. When the camera pans by, you're looking at the burning remains of a plane that likely never would have flown again anyhow.
https://youtu.be/xATn1MagKx0
Many people since then think the plane was crashed, but I used to know several people who had taken part in the filming, and this has long ago been confirmed.

I've read both versions of that. I remember reading a magazine article that was written around the time of the filming that said that they deliberately crashed it. And there are now articles on line giving both versions of the story.

Even if not a flyable aircraft, a potential static exhibit was lost.

JR

I'm surprised no one has raised this question:

Have there been any attempts made to fundraise and construct REPLICAS of such aircraft, using modern metallurgy/design and construction? I know that some replicas have been made of the far smaller fighters such as the Japanese Zeros, but what about a B-29 or B-17? Or even a C47/DC3?

These planes are confronting the same problem that all steam locomotives are: age. The absolutely newest major American steam locomotive "available" for operation, save for imported Chinese steam, is 72 years old this year. The newest British steam, aside from the replicas and new-build and imported Welsh NG steamers, is 62 years old. Contrast this with C&O 614 doing its Chessie System runs, and N&W 611 re-premiering, at 32 years of age. The "world's most famous steam locomotive," Flying Scotsman, hits the century mark next year, although it's a supreme case of "George Washington's hatchet" (23 handles and seven heads later--but still "his" hatchet.....).

And neither the World War Two planes nor the steam locomotives were built with three-quarters of a century of operation in mind. no matter how carefully one may "baby" some of these planes (and in the shows I've seen, they don't), you can only expect so much out of vintage metallurgy.

I actually thought about that, too. I would tend to think that a new-build steam locomotive would be easier and probably much less expensive. Aluminum ain’t cheap. While you could design a new airframe with structural improvements easy enough to replicate the look of the original, that’s the easy part. And how are you gonna find the power for it? You’d have to start that from scratch. You’d have to remake an awful lot of specialized tooling and fixtures for a one-off. Those one-time costs could be killer unless you spread it out over many planes. Consider the cost of modern planes that they make assembly line style.

Not saying it can’t be done, but methinks you’d need a couple box cars stuffed tight with high denomination cash.

There are many replica large scale and full-sized fighters out there.
Look up the ME-262 replica jet fighters that are at shows from time to time.
C-47/DC-3 types are still too common today to be worth your while building a new one.
For what it'd take to build a brand-new flyable B-17, a few have looked into it, and deemed it unreasonable to do so. If you really take a look at something like that, it's far more complex than any steam engine, with parts that are easily damaged and bent. For how much the engineering and construction would cost, you'd never make enough off the airshow or barnstorming circuit to make enough to fly the thing, let alone build it. Not with real ones still out there.
Perhaps once there are no longer any originals and assuming the FAA won't have by then stopped anything like this from flying (which is a very real possibility, one that many think will happen the first time a bomber goes down into a school or shopping mall and takes out a bunch of bystanders), maybe someone might try.
That said, two non-flyable B-17Fs were recently made for the 2023 series, "Masters of the Air," about the 100th Bomb Group. the have electric motors on the main landing gear to move them around, with fake static props that were removed for scenes where CGI spinning props were added.
https://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/masters-of-the-air-production-beginning-to-unfold.html

On the topic of replicas, it begs the question: At what point does a replica build become historic in its own right? For example, when the PRR 5550 is finished, the T1 Trust will have a genuine replica mainline steam locomotive- the first built in the US since the 1950s and a landmark example of steam locomotive design, engineering, and craftsmanship. Will we one day look back as it approaches it's 50th, 60th, 70th anniversary (or more?) and regard it as an artifact of our current world, too precious to operate and use up? At that future date will we look back on the antiquated engineering and material sciences of the 2020's and question how wise it is to push our luck by continuing to use it? Should we build another one at that point to avoid using the first replica?

The John Bull replica was built to use as a stand in for the original, for obvious reasons, but now the RRMPA holds operating it unthinkable along with the rest of their collection. To preserve the original fabric so I'm told.

Just a thought experiment.

Sort of an ironic post, given the tagline about fearing the future.

First of all, I find it odd the focus is on the loss of machines and not human lives. Second, nothing continues pari passu indefinitely. Given that a B-17E was found in a Maine scrap yard in 1985, we can't be sure we have a full inventory.

Unless we're going to simply go back to the mantra that operating archaic machinery is "violence" (a premise that used to be discussed here 20 years ago) then we have to ask some fundamental questions.

Is your "definition" of history objects presented statically or objects operated (even if not as intended; the purpose of a bomber is the delivery of a payload) with a continuity of repair, maintenance and operating ability.

In 2007, my wife and I took a "ground tour" of the B-17 Aluminum Overcast at the Capital City Airport. We were fortunate in that at the time, a pilot of those planes, then in his 80's related his experiences the B-17 over Europe and the B-29's in Korea. His interpretation as a first party witness was amazing. I assume it is unfortunately likely that he has since passed, but I'd still appreciate that sort of contact.

Now, complete fleet inoperability is an inevitability; not a contingency. All airframes have a limited life; many of the flying "warbirds" already have substantial portions of their components replaced.

Eventually, critical components such as engines have to be replaced from a diminishing inventory of authentic components; replication of things such as pistons is certainly possible, but costly. Moreover, should a particular alloy be found wanting in some aspect of performance or durability; we can be sure it will be substituted for something better in the even there's a remake; nobody is going to want to use less than the best given the fixed costs. That leads to the question "when does it cease to be a restoration and become a replica?"

I assume like in most other aspects of life; accountants, not engineers and technicians will determine that continued operation is economically infeasible, long before it is technically impossible.

Metal as I understand it, especially older alloys always have impurities that eventually create internal faults that result in reduced strength under load. (Metallurgists, correct me if I'm wrong) It is for this reason, nobody with a brain fires a 16th century blunderbuss. For that matter, I think the majority if not all 19th century firearms aren't loaded to avoid a catastrophic failure.

Is it necessary to operate these planes? There's the $64.000 question. Unlike trains or cars, where we are attempting to offer contact to ordinary people that was experienced by ordinary people in the past; the operation of old war birds wasn't a civilian occurrence unless you were in the military, or a civilian contractor or an Axis civilian, your contact with these planes was movies and newsreels. How accurate do you want to be? I'm fairly certain nobody wants to see a B-29 drop an atomic bomb to recreate the past.

Is it desirable to operate them? Absolutely to some extent. We are in a new iconoclastic age; where wide swath of people simply don't understand the limits of living in the past and heap condemnation on the dead with 20-20 hindsight. Maybe it's useful to see these things in operation as long as possible; with their operations recorded for the day they are done. Nobody today really understands taking a B-17 over Germany (especially prior to the protection of the P-51), being a 19 year old Kansas farm boy desperately trying get that last mission in, so as to escape the grasp of the reaper, knowing there's a quarter inch of metal between you and the Bf-109's 20mm.

Obviously, the aviation authorities will investigate; and they may be able to identify a specific cause. Reflection may provide for new safety protocols or procedures. It's possible, given the flight path of the P-63, that the pilot had a sudden medical problem.

Let's wait and see before reflexively calling for a grounding; something that is vain, unless you are going to buy all the remaining birds to ground them.