A Trip Worth Taking

[Editor’s Note: Ed Stephenson is a VASI corporate member and won the door prize raffle at the January meeting – a complementary flight aboard the B-17 Flying Fortress during the Wings of Freedom Tour visit to Venice. Ed recounts his ‘trip worth taking.’ Photos courtesy of Ed Stephenson]

The day began on a down note as I had to wait longer at VNC than I had anticipated.  I was told to be at the VNC Jet Center at 9AM to hitch a ride with Nick Piscatelli in his airplane to Sarasota where I would board the B-17 Flying Fortress.  Arriving ten minutes  early, a personal habit from years in the military, I became more and more impatient, as first 9AM came and went and then 9:15 came and went and then 9:30 came and went.  We departed VNC around 10AM and the flight up there was very good with Nick’s solid performance and the beautiful weather coming together to remind me of the good hours I had flying during my military career.

Once arriving in Sarasota however, I was back to the hurry up and wait mode as I learned that we were very early and I would probably not be leaving Sarasota on the B-17 until around 2PM.  A three plus hour wait and I had not brought anything to read!

As I stood there on the tarmac outside the Rextrix FBO watching planes come and go, my spirits began to sink and I was reminded of another time when I was standing on a tarmac and wishing I was somewhere else.  That time it was my daily watch of the Boeing 757’s leaving King Khalid Military City, Saudi Arabia taking others back home from the first Gulf War while I waited anxiously for my number to be called.  While I knew this waiting was not the same as that waiting, that was not very helpful as my tolerance for any waiting for a flight had long ago reached a very low threshold due to KKMC and the many other situations in the military where I was not in control of what would happen to me next.

Finally, it was time to board and as I lined up single file with all the others to board the B-17, my excitement “low level light” was flickering regularly and I was settling in to a mental posture of stoicism while thinking that nothing that would be forthcoming was going to overcome a mood which had begun darkening at about 9AM that morning.  Sure enough we were herded into the belly of the aircraft and directed to sit on the floor, out of view of anything but the interior of the plane itself.  Now it was really getting bad!  But as I looked around at the aluminum construction of the fuselage, the waist gun and the flexible ammunition feed chute my interest heightened and I could begin to see again what this opportunity really was…a chance to peer through the curtains of time at another era of aviation, one long past before I became a pilot. The design and construction of all the components were so much different than the ones I had seen in Chinooks, Blackhawks, C130s, C5’s and C141’s.  No where did I see the hydraulic lines that were so much a part of the military aircraft I knew.  Could most components on the aircraft have been operated electrically, I wondered.  This construction and design reflected a time period when the problems of employing military aviation were very new and the technology to work with was more limited. Another realization about the opportunity that was before me!

The radial engines soon began to spool up and we taxied out and took off effortlessly.  The smoothness of the sound filled my ears as we climbed and I realized we lost an amazing sound from our military airfields when we stopped using radial engines.  Soon we were told we could stand up and move about the aircraft!  As I moved first to the waist gun position then to the radio room and then across the narrow walkway in the bomb area to finally crawling to get to the chin turret, I was completely caught up in the world of being a B-17 crew member in WWII.  I glimpsed the anxiety of wanting to do my job, of not letting the other crew members down, of not being responsible for getting us shot down.  It was amazing to think about these things as we rumbled down the southwest coast of Florida, me sitting in the chin turret gunner’s seat with a view to history and the beautiful day that was on the other side of the chin bubble.  When we deplaned in Venice I was still smiling!