EAA's B-17 Aluminum Overcast Visit to Santa Fe

Since the El Paso chapter dropped out, the EAA called us and we jumped on it. It's a beautiful plane, here
Here it is on arrival taxing in Here's a head on shot from about 50 yards away. I took this shot from the rear.
While I was back there I took this one of the tailfeathers You can make out the nose art from this
front left shot. Here's a close up of the nose art I don't quite see the tie-in between her riding a lightning bolt
and the name - but who's complaining? We had a old guy visit who was the ball turret gunner in WWII.
He flew with us. Here's a picture of the undercarriage. I took this of the wingroot fairing.

I got a ride in it. I sat behind the pilot facing aft - the window was above my head. Once off the ground we
un-buckled and I made for the nose. In this frame you can see the bomb sight with Santa Fe below. Sitting
in the navigator's chair I took this picture out the window of the left engines I crawled out of the nose and thru
the bomb bay. There are 4 racks in there with 6 100lb dummy bombs in each rack. It held twelve 500 pounders.
I sat down in the radio operator's station and we started to circle the State Legislature (called the Round House)
At my feet was the ball turret. Right where the right waist gunner could step on it and trip.

We banked left (west) and I got this picture of the mountains - the Santa Fe ski area is right about the gun barrel.
I made my way back to the nose in time to see Los Alamos airport in front of the left engines. We circled North
of town and I took this of the Los Alamos ski hill The white dots are the sun glinting off the plexi-glass. You can see
where the fire burned it's way around the west end of town - taking out all the trees. Completing the bank we
came in right over 'downtown'200 feet and 200 mph! Then lined up on the runway and did a
low hotpass, down to 150 feet. The pilot pulled up with a nice zoom left turn. Then it was back to Santa Fe where
I herded people up the ladder for tours the rest of the day. The ladder was in the door under the cockpit where
Gregory Peck couldn't pull himself up when he had his breakdown.

Jeff flew down after work and once all the tourists left we tucked his KR under the nose. Here are a few photos of that.
The KR with the nose art
A frontal view
Jeff and the B-17