World War II legend fights off recession

The Liberty Belle, operated by Tulsa's Liberty Foundation, is among a dozen B-17s still flying. Each year it tours about 50 cities from February through November, giving anyone with $430 ($390 for foundation members) a chance to experience flight in the plane memorialized in numerous films, notably “Memphis Belle.”

For Don Brooks, foundation creator and director of the Liberty Belle’s restoration, it’s a hobby and business, with the former providing the satisfaction and the latter the headaches.

Brooks said the number of fliers each weekend ranges from 50 to 200. Most are veterans or, increasingly, young people wanting to better understand and appreciate the older relartvies' wartime experiences.

When asked to describe the greatest challenge, Brooks replied, “Keeping her in the air.” The Liberty Belle is funded entirely through donations. He said support from passengers and other donors has remained at reassuring levels despite recession.

“It costs about $5,000 an hour to fly the plane,” he said, struggling to help a colleague fix a flat tire nearly as tall as he was. “But we’re doing great. We have wonderful support from all these people coming out to fly with us. We were worried that the slow economy might hurt, but it doesn’t seem to have.”

The Sanford-Lee County Airport in North Carolina was a summer stop for the silver war bird, the support trailer and its small staff of flight crew, crowd controllers and souvenir stand workers. The crowd was mostly middle-aged men, some accompanied by wives and children showing varying degrees of interest. A few World War II veterans were there and one Eighth Air Force veteran using a walker toddled to the plane’s rear door and was delicately lifted inside for a dose of midair nostalgia.

The foundation’s Web site states that the current incarnation of the Liberty Belle came to life in August 1945 as the war ended. Instead of seeing combat, it served as a test bed for turbine engines. After a tortured retirement, including severe damage in a Connecticut tornado, Brooks bought the pieces and spent $4.5 million for a 14-year restoration completed in 2004. He insisted on copying the first Liberty Belle’s colors as a tribute to his father, who was a tail gunner in the bomber.

First reactions from spectators focused on its size -- closer to a commuter jet than modern warplanes. After squeezing into the plane, passengers sat on canvas benches or, near the radio operator’s desk, padded seats, stuffing foam plugs into their ears to deaden the roar of the lumbering takeoff. Once aloft, they were free to roam the narrow, noisy interior from the bombardier’s cramped position in the nose, to the two-man cockpit, the bomb bay holding replicas of standard 500-pounders, and back to the waist gunner positions equipped with authentic .50-caliber machine guns.

In combat, the B-17 carried a 10-man crew. On this flight, 10 civilians relived the experience, minus the terror of fighters and flak that cost the Eighth Air Force 50,000 airmen in three years of the American daylight bombing campaign against Germany.

The B-17’s history may be glamorous but there was nothing glamorous about riding inside. It was metal tube with wings, all edges and no frills. Foundation spokesman Scott Maher said plenty of passengers fail to mind the low clearances and “leave DNA samples behind.”

This day was clear and the air was calm. Still, walking the narrow strip of metal over the bomb bay was a precarious adventure, with the two rope railings offering scant help in case of lost balance. A popular spot was in the radioman’s spot, where the escape hatch was left open to allow passengers to stick their heads out and look back to the tail and beyond. The nose area, where the bombardier and navigator worked, were only accessible to the lithe and nimble, a distinct minority in this group.

The imagination did not have to go far to visualize the wartime experience -- adding the horrific factors of fighters, flak, breakdowns and subzero cold that flew with the crews every time they left base.

Those crews are the prime motivation for keeping the Liberty Belle flying, said Maher.

“We’re losing 1,500 veterans from that war every day, “ he said. “We hope that this plane represents them and all their stories of courage and valor.”

For Rod Mortenson, an orthopedic surgeon from nearby Greensboro, the flight was both an adventure and pilgrimage. His father built bombers during the war, he said, and that fired his lifelong interest in the strategic bombing campaign and the B-17.

“When I was looking into that bomb bay and seeing how small it was, I realized that 10 men’s lives were put at risk to deliver just 10 bombs,” Mortenson said. “It was so terribly inefficient."

The foundation has more plans to preserve and replicate the experience of flying in a World War II bomber. Another B-17 was recovered from a Canadian lake and Maher said its restoration should be complete by 2015.