Today I met my friend Gary Spaeth at the Eau Claire Municipal Airport to get a close up look at a B-17G Flying Fortress that landed earlier in the day and will be here through Monday. "Sentimental Journey", according to the history blurb: "was built in late 1944 by the Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach, California. It was sent to the Philippines where it flew on reconnaisance missions. It never saw combat (even though the bomb symbols on the side originally represented such missions).
After the war, it was statoned in Florida where it was used for search and rescue missions in the atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Later it became a mother ship or remote control drones that the military flew ovr nuclear test sites. In 1958, it was acquired by the Aero Union Corporation of Chico, California, which used it to drop flame retardant chemicals on forest fires in the West.
In 1978 it was donated to the Commemorative air Force. After an exhaustive restoration, the plane is now "95 per cent" authentic.
Since the restoration, it has been in hundreds of air shows. Those shows are tallied on the plane's nose in the form of little bombs stenciled on the metal just above the painting of 1940's pinup girl betty Grable. There are also two movie cameras stenciled there, representing the two films the plane has appeared in: "1941" and "All The Fine Young Men".
The plane visits about 60 cities a year.
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