The Most Honored Photograph - The Eager Beavers B-17 Crew

[Ryan Dembroski]

I'm sure all of you Warbird guys and gals have heard this story before, but it was a new one to me.
It's got a few B-17 details wrong and some hyperbole (every good war story does), but it's pretty great: http://petapixel.com/2013/10/29/honored-photograph/

[jjhoneck]

That is a great story!

[Bill Greenwood]

A great tale of determination. One question, it talks about "replacing the light .30 cal machine guns with .50 cals". As for as I know B-17 s always had .50 cals, never heard of them with .30s. Some British bombers only had .30 cals and it hurt them.

[Ryan Dembroski]

I'm definitely not a B-17 expert, so I don't know. A few commenters on the article had the same observation that you did Bill.

[champ driver]

An excellent story of determination and bravery.
Here's a little more information on the story of the crew and the specific B-17 involved. It was an E model and they did come from the factory with a mount for a .30 caliber machine gun in the nose,
they were delivered with 8 .50's and 1 .30 caliber so the part about switching from .30's to .50's sounds true.
That information is from my book B-17 in Action, by Squadron/Signal publications. The D model was delivered with 6 .50's and 1 .30 cal., of course only 42 were built of that model, whereas 512 E models were built, even the later F model had 9 .50's and 1 .30 cal. guns installed.
This last bit of information is from Flying Fortress The illustrated biography of the B-17's and the men who flew themby Edward Jablonski.

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-17/41-2666.html

[Bob Dingley]

I thought that tail number rang a bell. About a year ago, someone sent me a link and I saved w/o looking at it. Check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Im086TCu3I

Bob

[Rick Rademacher]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeV4yrxV1YQ&feature=youtu.beTalking about 50's. This is an interesting video about making them for the B-17 restoration in Urbana Ohio.