Liberty Belle Makes Her Debut To Society

Story And Photos By ANN Contributor Kathryn (KT) Budde-Jones

Like Scarlet O'Hare making her formal debut at a southern cotillion on the arm of Rhett Butler; the newly restored B-17 Liberty Belle made her formal debut on the Arm/wing of the P-38 Glacier Girl at Atlanta's Dekalb-Peachtree Airport.  The cotillion was in celebration of General Paul Tibbets' 90th Birthday and the planes gathered in his honor.

General Tibbets is noted for being the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay, but during the summer of 1942, Major Paul Tibbets, was pilot of another bomber, the B-17 Red Gremlin. The Red Gremlin was part of the Bolero Mission that helped escort P-38 fighters across to England so in turn those fighters could escort the bombers to their targets over Germany.

The P-38s did not have the navigational equipment to find their way across the North Atlantic via Greenland; the B-17s were their "mother ship" and pointed the way. During the summer of 1942 a squadron of B-17s and P-38s were forced to land on Greenland due to bad weather and strong headwinds. Through many years of snow and ice these planes ended up under 265 feet of ice. The P-38 "Glacier Girl" was one of those trapped in ice for decades. After many years of searching, excavating and restoring she was flown to the Gen. Tibbets' surprise Birthday party to help with the celebration.

Don Brooks, founder of the Liberty Foundation that owns and operates the B-17 Liberty Belle participated in the Greenland expedition that located and recovered the Glacier Girl. Originally, looking for one of the B-17s that was trapped in the ice, Don focused his ingenuity and expertise on recovering the Lightning when he realized the B-17s were too crushed to be salvaged. The support and supply plane for the Greenland expedition was his C-47 that had dropped paratroopers on D-Day and Market Garden. All three planes flew in formation in honor of the General's and friend Pat Epps Birthday.

Pat Epps and Don Brooks worked together on the Glacier Girl project, extracting the P-38 from the ice. Pat and the General also have a common history often celebrating their common birthdays together, this years being an extra special occasion. Mercury Air Service, located at PDK, hosted the celebration. On hand to help Paul Tibbets mark the special day were his crew from the B-17 Red Gremlin, Orville Splitt, Dick Wiley, Charlie Peach, Red Horning and Dutch VanKirk. Several of them went on to serve with the General when he worked on the Manhattan project. Don Brooks graciously took the veterans up for a flight in the B-17, after which one remarked that he had not been in a B-17 in 62 years. The Generals family was on hand to wish him well including sons and grandson Paul IV, a B-2 pilot in the Air force.

The afternoon's celebration climaxed with the formation flight of the P-38 flown by Steve Hinton, the B-17 Liberty Belle flown by Ray Fowler and Al Malecha and the C-47 by Pat Epps and Bob Harless, members of the Greenland Expedition. Syd Jones flew the T-6 camera ship. Seeing these planes fly together was an aviation happening that won't happen again. Well, maybe on the General's 100th birthday!

FMI: www.libertyfoundation.org