As a follow-up the plane with the teeth (Betty's Dream) shown at the beginning is to pay respects to the 345th bomb group. I have mentioned this before but there is a great book (Warpath across the Pacific), which covers the "Air Apaches"(Note veritcle stabilizer on that aircraft and one other scene taking off). Anyway, the aircraft was one of 4 squadrons, and one was the "Bats out of Hell", and they had the bat with teeth painted on the noses. Another was the falcons, with similar paint jobs on their aircraft. Stories of them flying across the Pacific when the group was formed in 1943 that several planes were never seen again on that crossing. From 1943 which was inception of the group, they lost 600 crewmembers, and had a plane lost on the very last day of the war, the day Japan gave it up!!! Great read and very detailed. The Barbie III which I showed was an H model, with the canon and guns in the solid nose, replacing the glass (Greenhouse) in the nose. This is the only one of these I have seen. This weekend was like an air show, since 8 of the planes flew with paid riders, and the others were arriving (Georgies Gal), for the static display and later flight to Dayton. On Sunday there was always something going on. We stuck with it for 5 hours, and were beat from the wind, and on our feet so much. That one doing the low pass did 3 of them that I saw, but this was the only one I got 100%. We were blocked by some of the planes and could not see planes touchdown when landing right away, and he snuck up on us. I secured a media pass and they took us closer to the runway where we shot all of them taking off. The line ahead of me kept creeping toward the runway, so I had to shoot through them until the planes got close, but was able to pan them all as nobody was behind us. Was nice of them to take us out there closer. Otherwise it was a long distance shot. Due to cost these gatherings are dwindling in numbers. A few years ago there were 20 B-25's for a similar gathering. Generally they have to pay their own way, thus they sell rides to cover costs. The 4 that did not do rides are not qualified for such rides. I don't know exactly how that works, but have heard that some were "Grandfathered in" or something about the insurance????
Greg
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2017 07:29AM by Greg Scholl.
