Tom Griffith, at the Lone Star Flight Museum 12th Annual Fly-Day

By ANN Correspondent Tom Griffith

Being a warbird correspondent for ANN has its perqs:  the trips to airshows of various sizes and locations; access "behind the ropes" at museums -- you get the idea.

During the last week of October, I received a phone call from Valarie Barak, Membership Director at the Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) in Galveston (TX). Any news from the LSFM is always exciting to me -- our family have been members of the Museum for a number of years now and I've visited with Valarie in conjunction with my articles on some of their magnificent warbirds and wonderful staff.

Valarie reminded me that on November 9, the Museum was having its 12th Annual Fly-Day that always happens at the end of the airshow season. It signals the end of the "active" season for their warbirds that make the airshow circuit. After Fly-Day, the A&P technicians and their assistants do the annuals on most of the airworthy aircraft, make modifications (usually consisting of un-modifying warbirds from their more modern configurations to their former operational configurations), etc.  I figured that since Louise and I were members of the LSFM, Valarie was calling me to see if we could help them out by parking cars, selling soft drinks, stamping cute little airplane images onto peoples' hands after they paid their admissions, etc. Instead, Valarie asked me if I wasn't doing anything that day, if I'd like to be a crewman on their B-17 on a flight during the airshow!

For the few people who might be reading this article and don't know about WWII aircraft, there are maybe five Warbirds that are considered the crème de la crème of WWII aircraft. One of them happens to be the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. The example at LSFM, a B-17-G is restored to portray the famous B-17-G, Thunder Bird. Thunder Bird is immortalized at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC in a nearly life-size mural "Fortress Under Fire" by Keith Ferris. I am very proud to have personally seen this magnificent mural at NASM.

Maybe 4 milliseconds passed before I said that I'd love to do it, if I weren't scheduled to work, and that if I WERE scheduled to work, I'd figure something out. I first phoned my wife and told her, well, actually screamed like a little child,  "THEY WANT ME TO FLY ON THE B-17 AT LONE STAR FLIGHT MUSEUM!"

I had about 10 days to prepare for my flight, give an interview to the local newspaper (a "Pharmacist by day, Aviation Writer/Photographer by night" story) and go on a serious job interview. (I wouldn't have mentioned that, except I got the job!)

New job, resigning from current job, selling a house, finding and buying a new house, packing, moving, traveling, learning the ropes of the new job in new town, learning the names of new people (thank God that the names of drugs don't change from one place to another), etc. -- all dwarfed by getting to fly in a B-17 bomber. To put things into perspective, I've had a number of jobs over my 31 years in the pharmacy business and in less than a month, I'll be adding what will hopefully be the last job, and I've never even come close to a free ride in a genuine WWII warbird. What would I wear? Which cameras would fly with me? What will the weather be? Will I die of a heart attack before the first engine even starts turning over?

Saturday, 11/09/02: My wife, Louise, and I arrived at Scholes Field (GLS) on Galveston Island (usually called the "Galveston Airport"). I got there just a little early for my noon flight -- about 3 hours early. I presented the letter of invitation to be a crewman, and looked out onto the area between the big LSFM hangars and the smaller hangars across the pavement from them. There were a number of LSFM and other aircraft parked out there.  I immediately saw the object of my affection and attention -- the queen bee of them all: Thunder Bird. She was surrounded by "worker bees" parked around her.  What???  The cowling sections were removed from around the Number 2 Wright R-1820 radial engine...

All the king's horses and all the king's men work on the B-17's Engine No. 2

There were guys on ladders and on the ground all feverishly working on the engine! What were they doing? The nice volunteer told me that there was a "small problem with one of the engines." I half-ran up to the B-17 and didn't like what I saw: I know enough about engine maintenance and when you see a big, strong young man like Paul Johnson (one of my tour guides from this past Winter when I got the grand tour of the LSFM's PB4Y-2 Privateer) doing his best imitation of a reciprocal saw, running in and out of the rear sparkplug hole on one of the lower cylinders, you know that there's trouble. "What's wrong?" was all that I remember getting out. Paul looked over, recognized me and replied with essentially two words:  "broken plug" - a spark plug had broken off (I didn't ask how/why it broke off) and I guess that the part that broke off was the top of the "shell," which has the hexagonal section attached to it (the part that a spark plug wrench fits), which meant that no regular spark plug wrench of any kind would be able to unscrew that plug out of the cylinder head. The B-17's engines, like all aero engines, have two spark plugs per cylinder, and just one being nonfunctional shouldn't ground the big bird - but there are these FAA regulations, etc. I mean…this plane has, let's see, 4 engines, each with 9 cylinders, and each cylinder has 2 spark plugs. Let's do the math… um, carry the 18… That's 72 spark plugs total -- only one being on the fritz would be too small to have any influence on the flight. Hell, they can fix it after my flight -- I want my B-17 flight…Waaaaaaah!

Flightline dentistry…

They were trying to extract it by cutting it out in pieces, like a dentist would an impacted molar, but Paul and company were a lot more delicate. They even used "gas" to try to help out. They used one of their monster CO2 fire extinguishers and a paper cone to direct the extremely super-cold jet of expanding CO2 gas into the area around the plug, trying to break something loose using expansion and contraction, etc. It made for a dramatic effect, but it didn't work. They tried using a broken bolt extractor, or "easy out" as my daddy always called them -- no dice.

No retreat, no surrender.

Some time after 11AM, when the team of mechanics decided that it looked like "T-Bird" was not going to be flying anytime soon, I got the notion that I really DID need to look into scheduling a ride on another aircraft. I did not know if the AT-6s, T-34s, or just what else would be available for taking up honorary crewmen, but I figured that the Airboss, Ralph Royce, would be the guy to ask. I'm always amazed that this very important gentleman seems to be involved in every aspect of every thing that happens at LSFM! He was right there, and I walked over, introduced myself as an LSFM member and Aero-News Network warbird correspondent. I told him that my name was on the list for the noon "ride" on the B-17, but as he already knew, it probably was going to stay earthbound at least for another day. I asked if I could get a flight on something else, and he offered a ride on their B-25 (restored as a US Navy PBJ) "Special Delivery." 

This beautiful blue and white twin-engine Navy bomber has been a favorite of ours since our first big airshow back at Easterwood Airport in College Station (TX) in 1986. Between Louise and me, we have probably dozens of photos of "Special-D," in the air, on the ground, in the museum, etc. If I were asked what my favorite WWII bomber besides the B-17 would be, the B-25 would be on the top of the list. Its Wright Double Cyclone R-2600 14-cylinder radials make what one aviation writer (me) has called a "beautiful, Godawful racket." It's descriptive and truthful.

I met up with Ralph a few minutes later in the museum's shop area (talk about another kind of heaven to me - I love all kinds of tools and they've got 'em here!) and he had the official list of who was due to fly on the B-17 at what time, etc.  I told him that I would LOVE to fly in the B-25 and he noted next to my name that I would be on the 1340 (that's 1:40 PM to regular folks) flight. He also wrote out a little note with my name on it and a message to the pilot of the Mitchell that I was scheduled for the 1340 flight, then he signed it. (It was reminiscent of the hall pass that we'd get in junior and senior high school so that we could go to the restroom.) I also had to fill out, sign and get a witness to sign a "Hold Harmless" statement to present to the LSFM in case something "went wrong" with the flight or plane -- a straight-forward form that said that I'd be flying in a non-commercial plane which was at least 40 years old (more like 55), etc. Hell, it could've said that there was a 50:50 chance that a wing would fall off and I'd die a horrible death, and I'd have signed it and climbed aboard when my turn came. I'm simply that big of a warbird nut. (Besides, I know that the maintenance on the LSFM's planes is second to none!)

I made my way back to Louise, who was as excited as I was over my being picked to fly in one of the Museum's wonderful warbirds, to tell her the bad news/good news story. She knows that I'd have picked the B-25/PBJ on my own (assuming they wouldn't let me fly the P-38 or the F4U).

It was about two hours before I was to report to the flight line, so we were forced to sit there in our folding cloth and metal lawn chairs and watch the airshow. Man, talk about torture! 

We had to endure sitting in front of parked warbirds such as the FM2 Wildcat, AD-4 Skyraider, P-47-D Thunderbolt, Spitfire LFXVIe and F4U Corsair to name the ones closest to us -- to further the pain, each one was so perfectly polished that the Texas sun reflected off of them as if they were colored mirrors. Combined with these and other planes taking off and doing fly-bys, singly and in formation and you have the kind of "torture" that I LOVE! The weather was beautiful - it was a little windy, but that helped it feel a little cooler.  Still, I simply was ready to jump out of my skin, waiting for my flight time to come.

Tune in to ANN's Thanksgiving Edition for Part 2, as our intrepid reporter finally gets airborne in a "noisy old airplane"…

FMI: www.lsfm.org