What we're looking at here is the canopy for the top turret for the B-17. It's for an A- 1B turret, which is what we're hoping to install on airplane and hopefully about six months to a year. Particular story about this turret is. We got a phone call, gosh, January two years ago from somebody deep involved in the B-17 community saying, hey, I saw where somebody had found a top turret out in the woods. You guys need to follow up on this and see if it's useful for you because these things just don't grow on trees, literally. And they sent me the link to the newspaper article that was written, and much to my amazement, it was from a hometown newspaper from. About 5 miles from where I grew up and I got the phone number and I got chased down the the author of the article and it said, hey, what is going on with this? There was a picture of this thing buried in the woods where it looked like they had used this as like a little Playhouse for kids because this was about 3 feet off the ground and they were running it, running in and out of it and everything. And it was next to an abandoned house and a nature preserve in northeast Ohio. And the lady told me that. Yes, they found it. They contacted a local museum up in Akron Canton, OH, called the Maps Museum Military Aviation Preservation Society. A wonderful little museum in Akron Canton Airport should go see it, by the way, and they've given it to them. And so I contacted that museum. A fellow by the name of Kim Kim Kovesci, I'm sorry if I mispronounce his name. Was the curator there? I called him on the phone and introduced him, told him who I was, what we were doing, asked him if they had plans for the turret. And they said, well, we don't have B-17, which we really don't have any plans for it. And I asked him if he'd be willing to part with it, if it were in any type of shape. He said, yeah, we'd absolutely like to see it go back where it belongs. So I'm I made a plane reservation, I flew home to see Mom, and I drove down. January, if I guess it must have been 2012 or even 2011 to go take a look at this thing. And when I got there it was a complete rusted out piece of garbage that I was thinking man, this thing isn't worth my flight to come up here. But I took a bunch of pictures of it and send them back to the people here at the museum and the guy that gave us the initial lead on the on the item and he said oh you got to get that thing. I think it's worth a lot of money. And yes we can fix it. We can restore it. No problem so. We made arrangements for the museum, they just gave it to us and we sent some people up in a truck to pick it up and we brought it back home and we've started rebuilding it and the top part here was actually in pretty good shape. Once we scraped down through the ruts, we got a corporate donation from the POR 15 company, which is a company known for making it rust preventative paint that is widely used in the. Muscle car and and classic car area. So the the whole thing was ground down to bare metal and painted with this pore 15 paint at the bottom. And then we've put body filler in to to make it all nice and smooth and pretty and she's coming back to life as a the centerpiece for our airplane. This is what we call the top turret tub. This is what the canopy top sits on and becomes the gun mount platform for the top turret for the the B-17. This part was also found in that. Nature preserve up in northeast Ohio. As you can see we're doing some modifications to it. We found that this section of the turret had been removed at one point in time and this is kind of a very critical mounting for all the hydraulic motors and the and the electric motor that drives this thing. We've been very, very fortunate to have this piece here made by a gentleman up in Connecticut that just drove past the museum one day, saw the airplane out in the, the courtyard in the back, came in, walked around, saw our. B17 inside. Got totally enamored with us. Said he wanted to help. This guy owns a machine shop up in Connecticut, so he made this beautiful piece of of aluminum at no charge to us. Flown down here several times, helped install it. I mean the guy just went above and beyond and he made this beautiful piece that we are now covering up the body putty so that it disappears into the rest of the the turret, so that it looks like it came off the factory back in 1944 whenever this thing was made. This little jewel here has been basically the product of the last year of my life. This is the ball turret underneath the belly of the B-17. We just installed this last week, last Tuesday as a matter of fact. It's still kind of under construction here. No glass or anything. We have all the glass. We're just not to mess around with it, but. A year ago, I drove out to California to pick this thing up from a person that had it. It was pretty much complete from a ball turret perspective. It actually was used in a movie, the Memphis Belle movie, as a movie prop and therefore it had been modified somewhat by the movie company. We were expecting this thing to be almost complete, but when we actually got out there, we found that the electric motor and the two hydraulic pumps and several other pieces of equipment had been removed and actually replaced with plastic movie prop type equipment. So right off the bat. We were missing the heart and soul of the airplane, the, the, the motor and the hydraulic pump. So we kind of. Took a step back and we started listing all the different parts we needed to bring it back to life. And we start putting feelers out to all the World War Two warbird collectors and parts aficionados and everybody that's in the business. And little by little, we started getting finding the stuff that we needed to fill in the gaps. I had a big spreadsheet going of all the different parts we needed with diagrams. I'd send them out to people and say, hey, we're looking for one of these. And we finally got everything pretty much where we needed to. In the meantime, we had taken the the turret completely apart, down to the last fastener washer screw, nut and Bolt, took it apart, cleaned it, repainted everything that needed to be repainted. We had a local Body Shop actually donate their time to painting of the interior. The Color that's painted on the inside. I don't know if you can see it real well here. But this kind of a soft, almost a light sky blue is the exact color that these, these all turrets were painted when they came off the assembly line. And the reason we know that is the color was matched to a part that came off of a B-17 that had gotten stranded in Greenland on its way to World War Two back in 1944 or 45, somewhere in that ballpark and got buried in a glacier and was there for 60 or 70 years. When it finally got uncovered and was salvaged and the person that got the ball turret used this to make a color charts or color copies from an actual piece that had never seen sunshine or ultraviolet light or whatever. So we know it's an authentic color. But as you can see, we've done a lot of work in here. Everything's pretty much where it belongs. Everything works. Now we just need to finish the the electrical work to it and this thing will run on. You know, by itself, like the way it was designed. Another interesting story here is even though we, you know, did a really good job of scrounging parts and everything, not everything was readily available. There's a big gear that goes up in the belly of the aircraft that allows this thing to spin, and it's made out of solid brass and it's about 44 or 45 inches in diameter, about this big. You just don't find those things laying around out of the blue. The the museum got a phone call and it was a the daughter of a B-17. Veteran whose father had passed away and she had some stuff out on old storage building and wanted to know if we'd be interested in it. So somehow or other the phone got the message got to me because it was Ball turret related. So I called the lady back. She lived in Wisconsin and turned out that her father at one time had an entire ball turret it in his basement just as a conversation piece. I guess. You know, I mean, how many people actually have a full ball turret it in their basement? Well, this guy did and that turret had since gone to another. B17 organization. But she still had some other stuff out in her shop. And, you know, she saw something about our airplane and she thought, well, maybe we could use it. So actually I got her to send me some pictures. And sure enough, one of those items that she had was that brass ring. And it's like, Oh my God, how much do you want for it? She goes, I don't want anything. I just want to give it to you guys. So yes, we'll take that. Thank you very much. So she sent it to us and she, I keep sending her pictures and all the stuff and I'm, I want her to come and visit to see where this piece that was her fathers is now going to be in the belly of our airplane. And if we go inside, I can show you what that looks like too, because it's it's really really cool story about how this thing came together. This is the inside of the airplane. Now we're looking at the ball turret. This is that big beautiful brass ring I was talking to you about that Miss Cherry donated to us and will sit here for perpetuity. Basically as a part of the the display, the tribute to the men that fought these magnificent machines. Another piece of the puzzle that we had to conquer was this support post. We didn't have one. Not many people have these things laying around but. What we did is we had pictures of these items and I'm actually going to Savannah Technical College to work on some AutoCAD type stuff. And I started doing this design and then I talked to the guys on the machine shop out at Savannah Tech and they said, oh, we can build that. Lo and behold, we now have a partnership with Savannah Technical College. We have, we had some interns this past semester that did a lot of drawing for us. The machine shop guys made this collar. This threaded pipe and this assembly up here and absolutely beautiful. So I mean again, it's taken a whole. Coordinated relationship with a lot of different people to make this thing come together, but. Here she sits and very, very proud of this thing. I'm like a proud father showing off his offspring and I can't wait to come back here sixty, you know, when I'm 60/70/80 years old and come up to this thing and say, Yea, I built that. This is my baby. This is the radio operators room in the B-17. It's right smack in the middle of the airplane. I'm standing in the Bombay, which is just behind the cockpit and we're just in front of where the ball turret sits. This is one of the first rooms that we finished basically on this B-17 and we had a lot of help from our local amateur radio society. They actually refurbished many of these radio pieces and we actually have this as an operating radio station. We have our own FCC call sign. We actually transmit and receive on special occasions. We have an antenna that runs out through the wing tip and outside to a long wire antenna and the guys take quite a bit of pride in being able to operate this for like veteran's day and Air Force birthday and other special occasions as when we'll fire this thing up. A lot of wood in the airplane, all the floors are wood. And the desks, obviously, were wood. And our our crew here, we actually built the entire wooden interior for another B-17 that's on display at Barksdale Air Force Base, The Miss Liberty. We built all the wooden ammo boxes, all the oxygen bottle holders, the desks, the floors. And the plane we originally got the plane, they had no seal section on it, was blocked off from the Smithsonian. And we were able to get the tail section here which was up in Alaska, a crash in Alaska. And you can see how it eroded over the years. We were able to make arrangements with the Dayton airforce base who controls the Air Force, all the parts, and we were able to get a Stinger exact duplicate of what we needed. So I went up and Darrell and I went up to. The Air Force Base and picked up the Stinger and we brought it down and our super guys down here in the. Metal shop has completely duplicated his whole tail section. It's called the Cheyenne. Reason we had to get a duplicate was there was no actually no plans from when they were originally built. This Cheyenne model was none. They couldn't have no plans. Well, we got plans for the rest of the plane, but none for the Cheyenne tail section. So the guys actually took the old Part 1 apart from Dayton, reconstructed this one, and then we shipped it back up to Dayton. Our metal shop guys did a fantastic job on reconstructing this whole. Cheyenne Tail section. This this section turns for the gun said there will be two vertical slots put into this ball. Once we get the guns up, we have two different versions of the gun mounts and depending on what gun mount you had versions to what the width for these gun slots are. And we have the gun mounts in here we've reconstructed. So we put them once we find out what that distance and then we will cut these pieces out and mount. The guns will go in the back here. Then there's another leather shroud goes around the outside of to seal it. This is one what the guns we got into into the ship and we're reconstructing the mounts that they go on to. All this done guys down at the tech Center has built this stuff for it. And we get this all welded up and once we find out because one goes on one side and the other gun goes on the other side and once we find that distance and that's what will dictate as to what we cut the slots in the ball we were seeing out there with previously. You're right on time. You wanted to know about B-17 pilot training? Well, largely it's a matter of putting across what we know about the airplane, what it'll do, and what it shouldn't be asked to do. Maybe aeroplanes are like people. You don't really get to know them until after you've lived with them a while. Takes time, too, to get well acquainted with an airplane. Time to find out just how far you can go with her and still stay friends, that's important. And men like our instructor have lived with this airplane long enough to become pretty good friends with her, so his job is just a matter of giving you the benefit of his experience. The procedure is pretty well standardized and you'll learn to be thankful for that. Routine like this circle tour of the airplane at the start, for instance, makes the students life a lot simpler. In the cockpit, you learn to follow the checklist because it helps you to keep your mind on your work. Details important when you're flying a big bomber and using the checklist means you don't overlook a thing. After you get the plane off the ramp and down near the runway, you're ready for the run up. One of the most important checks of all. Center at an angle. That gets all your props safe over concrete for the run up, and if there's a guy behind you, you won't blast them when you Rev em' up. As your copilot, the instructor locks the tail wheel while she's rolling so that when the wheels in line, the lock pin will drop into place. Tail wheel locked and. Brakes. Brake set. Maybe here you'll switch to Interphone. Easier to talk that way. Then the checklist again and the instructors command to check trim tabs, set them at zero. Elevator trim tab, rudder. tailor lock? Before the run up, always check your oil temperature. You ought to have at least 40 degrees before beginning the run up. Why not close? Cowl flaps hurry it up a little. It might mean trouble if you're closing. You get uneven cooling, local hotspots, metal fatigue. I got it. Just like bending a wire back and forth until. It breaks. That's it. Exercise turbos. Right. You advanced throttles to 1500 RPM for turbo exercise, and you know why it's important. To get warm oil circulating through the turbo regulators. If regulator oil is stiff or congealed, the turbo wastegates won't react properly. One avoidable cause of a runaway turbo on takeoff leaving turbos on you do a repeat on the props, give them plenty of time to change pitch. What's the tax for that? If it's below freezing, exercise both turbos and props four times. Set the lock to keep the levers from creeping. And then. Turbos off and before the mag check another important detail. Before your Rev them up, turn on your generators and check each one for ampere output. If they balance, they're all putting out, all right. Ampere output OK. Now voltage and then turn them off. twenty-eight and a half on each. Generators checked and off. Check Mags at 28 inches starting with number one. Find your boosting manifold pressure. You remember there's a backfire hazard during the mag check, so you check turbos off waste gates open just to be sure. pull Left. Don't watch the tag, watch the engine. Roughness doesn't always give you a quick drop in RPM. hold right. hold. Driving up to the stop, a quick check of manifold pressure and then full turbo. Since you're using 91 grade fuel here, you can't draw 46 inches. Powers cut about 10%. You set your lock. Check RPM little below 2500 on this fuel. Take a look at the engine and everything OK. Back slowly on the throttle because of the induction backfire hazard. Same procedure on all engines. Back to command to call the tower for takeoff clearance and you're off to the races. Lock tail wheel. Parking brakes. Hold it with your feet on the runway. Less hazard if you have to get away fast. Gyro set the gyro compass and check your compass heading against the heading of the runway. Gyro set. Generators. Generators on. Tail wheel locks light up. Now let's see you ride her. 3 point take off. 3 point? 3 point. Pull the tail down, but don't give it enough pressure to cause a lot of wheel drag. And remember, you fly the airplane. Now watch the. Engine the cowl flaps. Open right. Hold the brakes until you got 25 inches, then let her go. You have rudder control by the time you're hitting 50 miles an hour with a cross wind. You might have to use the throttles a little. Runners, enough today. On 100 octane you'd be using 46 inches and 2500 RPM, little less than that with this view. You'll leave the ground at around 100 miles an hour. Then a kick on the brakes to stop the wheel spin and gear up. Get rid of that drag fast. In take off emergencies the bare belly is better than wheels. Check the light. Visual inspection later. 130 safe air speed for power reduction. Manifold pressure first. Pilots job, but today your instructor does it. Then RPM. You'll find it all in the tech orders and your checklist. Co-pilot trails, cowl flaps returning each valve to the locked position. Check your landing gear. Up left, up right. And when your flight engineer gets an OK on the tail wheel, the switch is returned to neutral. Things happen fast on the takeoff, and it's easy enough to tense up a little. You did well enough, but. Don't fight her. She won't throw you. On our next takeoff, you'll reduce power. I'll just make the final adjustments. Hold your airspeed to 135 on the climb. What's our power setting? 35 inches. 2300. Let's switch back to Interphone again. Do you always use this power setting? For climbing, yes, with 91 grade fuel and up to 30,000 feet. If you're climbing on instruments, you should hold your airspeed at 160. Are you keeping her trimmed? Turbo and throttle settings always depend on altitude. For instance, if we'd taken off from the sea level field, we wouldn't need turbo or even full throttle for the early part of the climb. Another thing, always cut down manifold pressure before RPM. What's your altitude? We're nearly 1000 feet above the field. Fuel boost pumps off. At 1000 minimum, check fuel pressure before and after. Give you another check on engine fuel pump operation. Look at your manifold pressure. Manifold pressure will creep up steadily on the climb if you don't watch it. As free air pressure decreases on the climb, the pressure differential across the turbo buckets increases, gives you higher turbo speed and more pressure from the blower. What about carburetor air? Filters. Turn them off at 8000. Don't often hit dust above that hit In emergencies though you can use them up to 15,000. Dust that high. No, not dust carburetor icing conditions. So now they're ice filters. In a way, yes. Filters. Off. Filters take care from inside the wing and the kind of weather that ices up carburetors. Air inside the wing is drier and warmer than that should get from the RAM air intake. Filter lights green filters off. Check your manifold pressure. Turning the filters off increases the manifold pressure about an inch and half. With carburetor icing conditions, of course you'd use intercoolers hot, but you won't normally get carburetor icing above 12,000 and up there you'll always want intercoolers cold. Thin air means higher rate of compression from the supercharger, and compression makes heat. In the. Wrong places. Nearly always in the wrong places. You'll level off at 10,000 feet and cut her down to the proper setting for maximum long range performance on 91 grade fuel. Manifold pressure down first to 28 inches. RPM next. You make this adjustment with one eye on the airspeed indicator, because you use whatever RPM needed to get 150 mph indicated in this case with your conditions 1600 RPM. Then fuel mixtures to auto lean and your co-pilot closes cowl flaps since you have a safe margin in head temperatures. What about the other power settings? Well you've used three, modified for 91 grade fuel, take off power, five minutes maximum continuous operation, climbing power and maximum long range. They're all there in the panel, the power setting used the normal cruising is always figured from your flight conditions, desired range, fuel available, weather conditions, altitude, gross weight, and perhaps one or two other things. In special cases. You'll always figure your best power setting from your flight computer. All settings arrived at scientifically. Don't improvise, plan the way they're written and always keep an eye on your mixtures. In auto lean. Don't use more than 29 inches with 91 grade and 2000 RPM. Explain something. Try to. That three-point takeoff. What about it didn't it feel right? Well, maybe I didn't pull it right. I thought it was a little mushy. Isn't it better with the tail up? And what about the stall hazard? Maybe we'd better figure it out on paper. Well, here we are. An old friend you'll remember from flying school days. She knows her way around. Call her tail up, Myrtle. Now take it easy, Myrtle. When Myrtle's parked on the ground, she sure enough in a stalling or near stalling attitude. So on the takeoff, you lift the tail, both to decrease drag and get a safe margin below the stall angle, and she takes off like a nice baby and there's no arguing about it. But with the missus here, it's different. In the three-point position, she's already in a flying attitude on the takeoff run, the relative winds parallel to the ground. So say the ground makes one leg of your angle of attack. Chord line makes the other leg. Angle of attack in three-point attitude about 10 degrees, but with power on the stalling angle for this airplanes about 19 degrees. So when you hold the tail down on the takeoff, you have a nice cozy margin of nine degrees below the stall angle. And when you leave the ground the path of the relative wind changes so the angle of attack actually decreases. You get maybe another four degrees of safety and you haven't a care in the world. Now let's dig a little deeper. Think of the forces at work when you take off as a team of little guys who are in their working for or against you all the time. For instance, gross weight of the aeroplane on the ground, he bears down hard on the landing gear. When we're ready to start the takeoff run, you'll meet a pal of his, wheel drag. The harder gross weight bears down on the wheels, the bigger and stronger wheel drag gets. That's definitely not good, especially if your runway is soft or slushy. Think of lift as a kind of muscle man working from the wings, pulling up gross weight. Speed makes him pull harder, and increasing the angle of attack also makes him. Pull harder. Get the relationship between lift, wait on wheels and wheel drag. The more lift, the less weight on wheels, less weight on wheels, smaller wheel drag. Then, of course, there's thrust. He's your power and aerodynamic drag. He's with you all the time, except when you're parked on the ground. Now let's try to visualize what happens on a 2 point takeoff. At the start of the run, lift increases steadily. Lift takes more and more weight off the wheels. Taking weight off the wheels steadily reduces wheel drag. Then, just when things are looking good, you'll lift the tail. Angle of attack decreases. That cuts down lift. Lift, Let's wait, go back down on the wheels and wheel drag increases again. Aerodynamic drag is cut a little, but not enough to compensate for the extra wheel drag. Speed still won't build up as fast as it would with the tail down, even on a. Smooth runway. You'll need more room and maybe 20 or 30 miles an hour more speed to get off than if you kept your tail down. If the runway is messed up with mud or slush or water. Maybe you won't get off at all in the space you have. But keep the tail down, take advantage of the three-point angle of attack, and lift goes to work on gross weight right away. Wheel drag gets smaller and smaller. You'll be airborne at maybe 100 miles an hour and without using up all your runway. And that's something to remember when you lined up in a nice homemade strip in the jungle with mud underneath you and trees dead ahead. Well, how do you like her? Try a little problem when you get over the field. Say your coming in after a long mission. You're a little short on gas. And when you arrived the fields closed in. Beeline for an alternate base. No Seb. You'd the hell and gone from nowhere. You're lucky to have one base to come home to. Cut the in boards and hang around until she opens. Well you're to hover all right, but don't cut the inboards. She'll burn more coal on two, than she will on four on long range settings. Take it over. Alright, here we are. Granite stuff straight is below up to say 2000. Don't know when we'll be able to find a hole in it. Instrument let downs out. What are you going to do? Don't you like it up here? Like it better down but if I'm low on fuel. Need less power, less fuel for a given indicated airspeed. Air is not so thin. Props take fewer horses. OK, that's part of it. When you get down to 8000, you give the command for carburetor filters on. And you finally level off at around 500 feet above your theoretical overcast. When you level up above the overcast, the idea is to keep from going places. Now that's simple cut your speed on the 120, even if you have to reduce your RPM to 1250 to get it. Try it first with 1400 RPM. All right, reduce manifold pressure. Try it with 26 inches. Jetison the Bombardier. No, your weights alright. You've used up most of your gas on the way home, and I hope you didn't bring any bombs back. Cut your RPM down a little more. 1250 is the minimum. With this hovering, maneuver fuel consumptions cut down to about 95 gallons an hour. At the end of a mission, you'll have a light load, so it's absolutely safe. Keep your banks at a 10 degree angle and just sit it out. Regular helicopter. Time to go in then. Landing instructions from the tower weather altimeter setting and back to work again. When you're ready for a landing, be sure your co-pilot runs through the checklist. No matter how good you are. Flying means fatigue and fatigue does things to your memory. So if you want to bring in this property without the insurance claim, have everything checked in order. Altimeter. OK, crew positions, automatic pilot. Off. Crew members at their proper stations. Side guns stowed. Ball turret guns up and pointing. rear. booster pumps on. Your power plant should be ready for full takeoff power in case a go around is necessary. Mixtures auto rich intercoolers cold. Carburetor filters on, windy ice is off. That's important when the icer operation changes a stalling characteristic of the airplane. Alden? tower. This is 641 on downwind leg. Over. 641 on Downwind Leg cleared to land, wheels down over. Roger. Landing gear down. Down left. Down right. Tail wheel down, trailing antenna in. Check brake and hydraulic pressure. Brakes OK. Pressure around 750. RPM 2100. Turbos set. Now we have power mediately available for a go round if we need it. Flaps should be lowered on the downwind leg, but not until air speeds below 147. one third flaps on the down wing leg, full flaps on final approach. And if you have to go around, you don't need the milk up your flaps, they'll come up slowly enough. You hold airspeed at 130 indicated on the base leg of the pattern. Then in a matter of seconds you make your bank into the final approach. Full flaps. High RPM. 120. 115 don't push your throttles until you're sure of a landing. 112 110. Freezer on. Hydraulic pressure is OK, otherwise you're gunner'd take off again. Call flaps open and locked. Turbos off. Booster pumps. Off. Wing flaps up. Get them up sooner if you have a muddy runway. Tail wheel unlocked. Generators. Generators off. Cutting the inboard engines is a co-pilot's duty normally, the pilot should keep his mind on his taxing, but it's quiet on the hangaring for today, and the instructor asked you to do it. Good thing, too, since you weren't too sharp about it. You can cut your inboards now. Check turbos off first. You need engine oil pressure to open the wastegates. No, no. Rev them up to 1000 before you cut them. Parking brakes? Got to hold it until the chalks are in. If you set your brakes on hot drums, you'll bake the expanded tubes. Don't turn off the ignition until the engines have stopped turning over. Alden Tower? (inaudible), this is 641 mission complete. See that all the switches are off before turning off the batteries in the main line. Booster pumps off. Landing gear, wing flaps neutral. De-icer?. anticer off. Inverters? Inverters off only when the instruments have returned to neutral. Inverters off, batteries off. Main line off. Block control surfaces. That's that, except for the bookwork. Just give him the facts. One more thing, record the time of day and number of minutes of oil dilution if you were diluting in this. Well, how do you feel? OK, I feel. Great. Remember, it's it's just another airplane. It's a little bigger than most, but the fact that you're flying it means that you've moved into the big time, and the payoff is it's the safest crate you ever flew. That's part of it. Not all of it by a long shot, but part of it at least. It's a little more complicated than a buckboard wagon. Still, on the other hand, it's not quite as elaborate as a battleship. Make things as easy for yourself as you can by taking advantage of little devices like the flight computer and the load adjuster and the checklist. All the rest, and that's plenty, is up to you, but I guess by this time you understand it pretty well. If you enjoyed this video, Please remember to like and subscribe. And as always, thank you for watching.
