Volunteers Building a "NEW, FLYING" B-17 in Ohio Museum

The most difficult item to build on this airplane will be the spars and wing ribs since they were built of aluminum tubing that started out round and were squared up by running a "mouse" through them. They were then made into bolted trusses. The next difficult item will be the corrugated inner skins in the wings. They will have to be manufactured by a very big rolling process. The bombay trusses are the same as the wing as well as the spar carry-through trusses. This will be an interesting and long project and I probably won't be around if and when it's done.

 

Ironically, the B-17 painted as "Memphis Belle" is in town this weekend, and I saw it flying around Marietta yesterday. I'll probably go over to PDK airport later today and give it a closer look.

 

I was thinking of parts that they will have to find instead of fabricating them; landing gear had some forgings in it, retraction mechanism, bladder tanks, cowling rings, and many specs and standards must be adhered to regarding materials and heat treat. Interesting.

 

Not that I would put down this tremendous project - but just for the record, are there no original airframes which could be restored at less cost & effort - and, of course, having something with authenticity when it is over?

 

Cheaper to buy one for $4mm or so like the last one that sold at that price iirc. Scratch built only makes sense if they planned on mass producing it and sell the others for profit. Would be nice to see a large group of them flying together and not worrying about losing the original one to an accident/fire.

 

I would think that it would be better to build from scratch something of which there are NO flying examples currently extant. At least there about 10 or so B-17s currently flying, one of which I saw here just two days ago!

 

Put the B-17 back into low rate production

I would have guessed with the hi-tech CNC machines and computers it would be a lot easier ? I also assume with relatively inexpensive skilled outsourced labor, it would not be too difficult to have parts fabricated ?





At the end of BUFF service in the A.F., it would be nice if congress will approve the donation of an airframe or two to the Collins Foundation. Would absolutely love to see a restored F7U Cutlass with updated engines flying around. That would be so KEWL.

 

The Museum of Flight in Seattle was actually restoring a Cutlass, though obviously not to be flyable, several years ago; I have no idea of its status.

Everyone said that no one in their right mind would actually want to fly one. I guess if you want to see one, it will probably be done on a computer.

 

The gutless Cutlass. The airframe was ahead of it's time. Just shoehorn two GE F404 engines and it will be ready to go

I understand the last Cutlass cruise was actually effective. I recently spoke by telephone with two former Cutlass aviators (VF-124 Stingarees). Quite a few of the operational problems (collapsed nose gears, flameouts, and deck fires etc&#8230 had been overcome. It was still underpowered. At the time, the Navy had already thrown in the towel.

 

I.e. the scratch built Hughes H1 Racer. Most beautiful plane imo. Such a shame the recreation and pilot were lost.

 

In my digging around with B-17 drawings, many of which I have, there is one very interesting thing that I found. The early drawings (1935 to 1941) had measurements in fractions. Then on the E model when they installed the B-29 horizontal tail on it , those dimensions were in decimal increments. So you had an airplane with two systems of dimensioning and it never changed.

 

It also needed modern electronic stability control...very close to being unflyable in many configurations which were easy to slip into from normal flight. Not to mention that it was possible to flame out the engines from fuel starvation by applying the afterburners too quickly or too long on takeoff.

Still very interesting and very forward looking for the day.