The former Ford plant grounds where all the B-24 Liberators were built is now a vintage plane museum, so if you need your fix to polish some mighty fine aluminum, bring your Mother's and some fleece rags this weekend to Ypsilanti.


Details are below.
https://www.yankeeairmuseum.org/hanga.../march2013.pdf

I worked with a mechanic once a long time ago who told me he had a contract one to polish an entire vintage plane by himself using an orbital sander with the biggest buffing wheel he could find, I forget how long he told me it took him.

B-17 Flying Fortress... and I would guess these were built at multiple plants (Boeing, with Ford as a contractor to build some runs)

B-24 Liberator

Very cool however!

My 88 yr old uncle was a flight engr on one for the "bloody" 100th squadron. Still going strong, but he had to have hip surgery last year when the hand grip came off his schwinn trainer and he fell to the floor.

A guy in my church flew 51 missions in the B-17. Awesome plane.
I watch 12-o'clock High 2-3 times a week.

I was there for this, totally awesome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J7nu...yer_detailpage

I've been lucky to know two B-17 flyers, Joe Slavik and Billy Robertson, both terrific men of America's greatest generation. Joe built a lot of homes in metro Detroit and owned a B-17 that he loved to fly. He also gave generously to charitable organizations such as the Boy Scouts.

Billy was my former gf's dad, and a tailgunner. His plane was shot down during the D-Day Normandy invasion and he had to spend the balance of the war as a POW. He led an adventurous life as a test driver for Chrysler.

I wonder if he knows my old neighbor Pete. Who was a navigator in a Fortress and also spent 3 1/2 years in a POW camp. There aren't many of these guys left. Bless them.

One of my Dad's best friends was a navigator on a B-17. Laughed my ass off when he and his wife were arguing (just teasing each other). She asked him if he were going to one of the malls in town, which way would he go. He told her, and she just looked at him and said "How in the hell did you make it to Germany and back?"

B24s were built by Ford and several other contractors. Consolidated - San Diego was the original developer. The B24 was the most produced plane of WWII. George McGovern piloted one. (Jimmy Stewart piloted B17s).

We had a -17 and a -24 here in Pensacola last week, they also had some war-bird fighters along, too expensive to fly along for me but they sell out every time they visit. That -17G in the OP is beautiful, my late uncle Kenneth Hill was a Navigator on -24's and another was a bombardier on them too and he paid a high price. My uncle, Honson Owen, was shot down over Holland and hid with a Dutch family for a year before a Nazi collaborator turned them in and he went to a Luftstalag until the end of the war. The family was executed, in total.

Bill

Love those vintage airplanes! somebody spent some time polishing this Lockheed Electra.

My dad piloted B17s in WWII. I found online that he flew 33 missions. Some of them were as a copilot after his plane was run into and destroyed by an RAF bomber while parked. He later flew B29s and then B36s. He said that the B24 was a death trap.

The name on the B17 was Phoenix, after the mythical bird. I always look for it in old films and pictures.

Ford did not build 'all of the B-24s' at Willow Run, but they built not quite half of the total production. A total of 18,432 B-24s were produced by all sources.