Re: B-17 Flying Fortress
I remember as a small boy having B-17s fly low over our neighborhood as a morale builder. It really worked; all of the neighbors came out and cheered them. They made thunder that vibrated our whole bodies. In early 1942 we needed all the morale boosts they could come up with.
When I first got to NAS Barbers Point in Hawaii in 1954 the Air Early Warning squadron that shared our parking area was flying B-17s (I don't remember the Navy designation) to patrol the central Pacific. It was strange to see what we had thought of as giant airplanes parked among the Super Connies that actually dwarfed them. They still made thunder as they flew over, though. It is unusual, because my memory is populated almost entirely by visual images. . . The B-17 is both visual and audio.
The Boeing B-17 is powered by four, Curtis Wright, nine cylinder, 1820 cubic inch, supercharged radial engines. There are no mufflers on them and the stacks are very short. They have the distinctive rumble that all radial airplane engines do.
This same engine later powered the Navy's Grumman S2 Tracker, which is an ASW aircraft. As a kid, I watched them all summer long, while at my grandfather's house. He lived a couple of miles away from a Navy training airfield, which was an auxiliary field to the one that President Bush (41) trained at. The planes would come down from the main field and practice "touch and go" landings at "our" field, which meant that they flew a pattern over our house, all day. The sound of those engines is something that was always a distinct feature, in my memories of my grandfather and the time that I spent with him.
Later in life, I became a Search & Rescue Aircrewman, flying primarily in another Grumman product - the HU-16 Albatross seaplane. The "Goat," as we used to call it, also had R-1820s in it. The sound of these engines, is I think, permanently etched in my brain. To this day, the sound of the rare radial powered plane flying overhead, will cause me to look up and watch the passing antique.
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