We came from all corners of the country at our own expense to Galveston, Texas, for a 15-minute ride in an ancient airplane. Nobody came away disappointed. The money spent and the vacation days taken meant nothing, you see, because the airplane was a B-17, the Flying Fortress. This one is in the careful custody of the Lone Star Flight Museum, and she is a beauty.
My host for this aeronautical treat was Commander Peter Hayes, then the Executive Officer at the Naval Air Field in El Centro, California. He had bid on a B-17 flight while attending an airshow convention, and he invited me to join him and three friends for the ride. I had not met Peter, but his mother and father-in-law are heroes of mine; our mutual admiration got me the spot. I had hoped to fly to Galveston from Tampa in our Cheyenne, but a huge mass of thunderstorms over New Orleans made the trip impractical. Circumnavigation to the north would have meant a fuel stop and delayed me beyond sunset, missing the flight. Circumnavigation to the south would have meant a swim. I called Peter to cancel, fully aware of the fact that I'd taken a seat and now I was not going to use it. He was generous with his understanding. "I never let my pride interfere with my life expectancy," he said. I told him I'd try the airlines.
To my amazement, I found a nonstop on Continental to Houston that left in a few minutes at a reasonable fare and a rental car was only $19. The gods had spoken. I could get to Galveston by 6:15 p.m., plenty of time for an hour's flight.
And so I pulled up to the Lone Star Museum site at Scholes Field in Galveston as Peter talked me in on the cell phone. I stepped out of the air-conditioned car into the warm humid Gulf air, looking for a man with a phone at his ear. But where was he? There were at least 40 people milling around and they were dwarfed by some beautiful airplanes. A P-51 Mustang, an F4U Corsair, a B25 Mitchell and, regally parked in the center of them all, was ship Thunderbird, the B-17.
We soon connected, Peter and I. He introduced me to his flying pals: Scott Kirk, former F-14 driver, now a first officer for Southwest, call sign Elvis; Rene Denuit, T-33 owner, if you believe that (his airplane burns 500 gallons of gas an hour on takeoff); and Mark Sterns, president of Higher Power Aviation, a training company where many airline pilot hopefuls get their type ratings. The common threads were clear. Mark's company had provided Peter and Elvis with 737 type ratings, and now they both work for Southwest Airlines. Elvis, Peter and Rene all had flown together in airplanes and in hangars at El Centro.
We shook hands with our pilots, Doug and Keith, both FedEx pilots and both volunteers at the museum. Lone Star Flight Museum vice president Larry Gregory said, "Don't step on the Plexiglas in the nose turret or all we'll hear is the thump when you hit the ground. And don't step on the bomb bay doors either or you'll fall out, too." We were shown to three seats in the radio room and two in the nose turret. Our pilots were a colorful lot. They wore bandanas not airline hats.
Between the radio room and the cockpit and nose turret there was a narrow, maybe nine-inch wide gangway across the bomb bay. On the ground, the bomb bay doors were open and I had a hard time imagining what the trip across this abyss must be like in flight.
Mark and I squirmed down below the flight deck into the nose turret. Headphones connected us to the pilots, and I could hear the ATIS as we got settled. The flight was to be squeezed into some interesting evening weather. The warm moist air was forming an intermittent cloud deck at 800 to 1,000 feet as it came onshore over the rapidly cooling coast.
"Pre-start checklist complete." A ground crewmember positioned himself in front of engine number three with a large purposeful-looking fire extinguisher on wheels. The big Wright Cyclone engine coughed to life, all 1,200 horses cantering smoothly. Next, number four, then two, then one. Now I could hear in the headset a discussion of taxi technique and the instruction to unlock the tailwheel. We lurched forward, our wing just clearing a Mustang parked to our left. "Watch out for the tailwheel on the taxi lights, that thing is a long way back there."
