Warbird Information Exchange

I've noticed in the past that on the B-52 flight scenes in the movie Dr. Strangelove there is the vary obvious shadow of a B-17. I never really thought about it and I just assumed that they were using stock footage from WWII or something but, I watched a behind the scenes documentary of the film and they talked about how they shot that footage themselves in a B-17. There were some pictures and some film footage of the aircraft. It looked pretty neat and even had the name Dr. Strangelove emblazoned on the side of the fuselage.

Does anyone know the story of this plane and what became of it?

As always, it's in Scott Thompson's excellent Final Cut.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

The B-17 in question is still flying as "Fuddy Duddy".

I concur with John B and would heartily endorse adding Scott Thompson's "The Final Cut" to any warbird lover's library. Each of the surviving B-17s has quite a story to tell, and Scott tells it very well.

Yes, I was, unfortunately, one of those who propagated that bit of information that turns out not to be correct. It was actually F-BEEA, one of the French IGN airplanes that later crashed during the filming of Memphis Belle. I thought I had included this tidbit in the third edition of Final Cut but I guess not...it will be in the fourth edition.



A bit about the B-17 in the film here:

http://www.aerovintage.com/strangelove.htm

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Scott Thompson
Aero Vintage Books
http://www.aerovintage.com
WIX Subscriber Since July 2017

My bad on that one. It is in the third edition. I think you even mention that the plane had incorrectly been identified as N9563Z, which eventually became Fuddy. The tidbit about the plane being Fuddy Duddy came from Martin Caidin's B-17 book, which for some reason, jogged my memory first. After all, if Caidin wrote it, it had to have happened that way, right? (Obvious sarcasm intended here).