The End of A Long Day

Well I've been out flying the line for the Collings Foundation for almost two months now. I'm getting a little tired of motel rooms and restaurant food. I've also gained weight! Almost every day its up at 7am, van pickup at 8am. If we have a morning flight in either the B17 or B24, we usually start engines around 9. If not we set up the airplanes for "walk though", put up the traffic cones and ropes and than set up the "PX". For most part we are outside all day, every day, in just about every kind of weather. If I'm not selling T shirts at the PX, I might be helping the mechanic work on the airplane. Most of the time I'm a presenter answering questions by the thousands and teaching WW2 aviation history.

Near the end of the day, if we have enough (6) people who wish to donate the money ($425./Person) we'll fire up the bombers and give them a :30 minute ride. Depending on where we're at (big cities) we might do 3 or 4 rides in an afternoon. When done we pick up everything, lock up the bombers and head for the motel. A quick fresh up, than its off to a restaurant for a dinner. That done its back to the motel and folks believe it or not, most of the time we're all in bed by 9pm!!

Being out side all day is very tiring (at least for me). Throw in flights in the morning and afternoon, and there is no partying. We're just to tired.

What do I get paid? Nothing. Its all volunteer. The foundation does pay for my room (which I share with another volunteer) and give me $20. per day for meals, but that's all. But! But, I do get to fly the only B-24J Liberator WW2 bomber left in the world. Most professional pilots will admit that is a significant feather in one's professional cap, as there are only 9 pilots certified and trusted to fly that airplane.

And I guess I am a people person to some extent. I truly love meeting the WW2 veterans who struggle with the infirmities of old age, to come and see (maybe for the last time) a machine of war, whether they knew it then or not, was transforming them into heroes. Almost all of them are very modest men and women. Their memories are mostly sharp and they are for the most part conservative in nature. For them, ( what is a distant historical event before most of our visitors were born), it was a national consuming event where almost no one was left out. Every American was doing a job. Even us kids, (I was almost 2 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed) were involved somehow. I remember collecting and crushing tin cans. Me, my brother and my cousins, were raised by a black woman, because all the women in our family were working in defence plants or other. I remember vividly the first Christmas my father was home from overseas. I have a great admiration for that generation. They were my heroes then and they are my heroes now.

As I write this (my second posting), we're in Stockton, Calif. Tomorrow morning we'll get picked up at 8 am. The first part of the day, I'll helping 'Mac' pull a cracked cylinder from his #1 engine on the B-17. Than I'll fly an actual 'bombing mission' in the B-24. You see there is a very juicy target (a hay bale in a farmers field) 10 miles east of here. We have some Walter Mitty type folks, willing to pay good money to experience what it was like to fly and fight, in the most unsung aircraft of WW2. The mission is too drop 10 250# concrete bombs from 3,000 above the ground. Fun? Well in WW2 it wasn't, but here? "No flack, no fighters today men. A milk run" but for just a little while they can almost sense the drama of what the Greatest Generation did. Where "Uncommon valor was a common virtue".

Check out this video.