Those magnificent men and their flying machines

Being able to climb inside was the best part!

Have you ever been inside one? I was surprised how cramped it was in there. The whole middle of the plane between the wings is taken up with the bomb bay, with a little six-inch wide & 10+ foot long plankway to get from the front to the back cabin, so the compartments left over for the 10 men on board are really tight. Everyone must have been bumping into each other all the time, especially when the plane was full of gear, too -- ammo, provisions, parachutes, etc.

Plus, the walls are surpringly thin (little protection from flak or bullets), and there's no climate control (not just for comfort, but for survival in the thin, -40 degree air at up to 35,000 feet), so it must have been miserable up there even without the fact that they were, you know, at war.

If you watch a movie like "Memphis Belle", it seems like it was roomy in there, maybe something like being inside a modern passenger jet, but it wasn't like that at all. Think more like, say, a cabin the size of a VW Microbus up front, with the equivalent of one or two more in back, separated by the bomb bay with a little two-by-four plank down the middle for you to carefully walk down, lest you slip and trigger one of the bombs.

And yet there were versions converted as troop transports! Some of them were used to carry as many as 64 people at a time, not to mention their gear. They must have been packed in like sardines.

Anyway, the tour seems to come around every year, and the Collings Foundation that sponsors it has a permanent museum in Stow MA, though the permanent home of the B-17 is in Florida. If you get a chance to see the B-17, I highly recommend it.