I didn’t intend to make this an All Mark Felton Weekend, but these came up in my feed, and I have friends as interested in aircraft as I am in tanks. So here are the number of surviving World War II fighters and bomber, and how many are still airworthy.
When we watched Twelve O’Clock High (which I highly recommend), we marveled that there were still enough B-17s around when they made the movie that you could crash some just to get it on film. Alas, that’s no longer the case…
Tags: aircraft, B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-29 Superfortress, history, Mark Felton, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Mitsubishi A6M Zero, P-47 Thunderbolt, P-51 Mustang, Spitfire, video, World War II
Cannot believe there is an actual surviving WWII Italian heavy bomber. That’s amazing. Imagine some guy going around all the post-war aircraft available and saying, “screw all these B-29s and B-24s, I’m saving this one that no one has heard of and looks like a pregnant goldfish.”
Well, it’s an Italian bomber at an Italian museum, so I imagine it was saved by Italians.
I imagine that every airworthy plane in the Fifteenth Air Force was flown home after the war, the Treaty of Paris didn’t let the Italians keep much in the way of an air force, and I doubt they got heavy bombers (as opposed to P-47s and P-51s) when they joined NATO in 1949. Italy doesn’t show up as an operator of the B-17, B-24 or B-29, so they probably never had any to preserve. (The Italian fascist government gave the one B-24 they captured to the Luftwaffe.)
When I first visited the 8th Air Force Museum in Pooler GA (outside Savanah just off I- 95) the guide was a WW2 veteran who did 50 missions as a gunner. Quite a moving tour. The museum is well worth a visit.
Anyone is or visiting Houston should check out the Lone Star Flight museum:
https://lonestarflight.org/
Not only do they have a great collection of WWII warbirds and other planes, if you have the dough you can actually book a ride in one of the remaining B-25 Mitchells. (I booked a flight in their T-6 Texan for my father a few years ago — he’d wanted to be a pilot when we went into the military in the 50’s but was told he was too tall. He loved it.)
Back in 1995, being politically incorrect Coloradans, instead of moralizing about the evils of Hiroshima we had a “WW-II Victory Celebration” at our airport. It involved an awful lot of what used to be called the Confederate Air Force [for reasons that had nothing to do with the issues of the Civil War] and is now PC-ed into the Commemorative Air Force.
I had a hand in the publicity for it, and as a surprise when my wife and I got there the organizers had a surprise for me. The first plane to take off and buzz the town to let them know that the celebration was on was a Grumman TBM Avenger Navy torpedo bomber. The surprise was that I got to ride in the .50 cal. gun turret for the flight [there was a local TV cameraman in the radioman/bombardier position between me and the pilot].
I was told by a fellow WW-II aircraft afficionado friend who was in church when we went over that the 1700 hp. radial engine did in fact wake everybody up. It is an experience I will always remember.
Subotai Bahadur
According to Wikipedia 25 F6F Hellcats still exist, which seems a larger number than 23.
You could always drop Felton a line and ask him about the difference between the two numbers.
Texas Raiders was based out of an airfield near where I live. You could always hear her coming, the rumbling of the engines would have stuff rattling in the house if she was low enough. I could always hear her coming in time to run outside and watch her gracefully, but loudly, pass by. Still miss her in our skies, probably always will.