I have a whole new level of respect for the people who flew in these things–B-17 Flying Fortresses–in World War II. They are cramped, hot, there’s not a whole lot of room to move around, and with 13- .50 cal machine guns firing over the sound of the engines it would have been very loud. In fact, when they fired up the engines alone it was a very impressive. This time we have some shots from inside the Liberty Belle.

Hot inside, would be an understatement; by the time I got a chance to crawl around in it, the plane had been sitting on the tarmac under the glorious South Florida sun for something like 4 hours. It was probably close to 120 degrees, or more, inside the plane and there is very little in the way of ventilation. At least they had the bomb bay open and a perspex panel from the roof removed. Not that it helped very much.

It war time, it was probably only marginally better in the air until they got to cruise level, at which point it would be very cold.

I can also say I very much wouldn’t want to be in one of these things when they started shooting at you. There’s very little room to move,  though it’s hard to tell from the photographs since they were shot at 10mm. Getting to the nose from the tail door involved crawling over a 1 foot wide catwalk in the bomb bay then though a small crawl space under the cockpit. Even then, once you’d reached the nose getting to the bombardier’s stool at the bomb site was nothing short of gymnastics, for me at least. To get to the tail gun required crawling though the smallest part of the fuselage around the tail gear. The belly turret was claustrophobia inducing just looking at, I can’t imagine what it would have been like sitting in one with your knees by your ears, for 8 hours.

Cramped, hot and yet so awesome.

Photo of me in the bombardier’s seat, courtesy of Bill Cantrell, used with permission.