The Swoose, 1945

[mike furline]

Miami, June 1945.

[Steve Nelson]

Man...I wish they would have just pulled her into a hangar right then and there. Over 60 years of neglect have taken their toll on the old girl! Of course, the fact that she's still with us at all is due to a series of borderline miraculous escapes.

SN

[hang the expense]

Just wow! She is just beautiful.Where did the black undersides she currently wears come from?It looks as if some of the repairs under the nose were done really nice.Hats off to the USAFM for getting their hands on this icon.

[Matt Gunsch]

Just wow! She is just beautiful.Where did the black undersides she currently wears come from?It looks as if some of the repairs under the nose were done really nice.Hats off to the USAFM for getting their hands on this icon.

http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/p ... ght=swoose

Amazing how clean she looks. Thx for posting. I'm now thinking this scheme would look best on her today. (soon)

[Steve Birdsall]

The Hamilton Standard Blade for January 1945 included this item:

"Alexander, the Swoose," veteran B-17-D [sic] Fortress, equipped with our 23E50 Hydromatics, paid one of his rare visits to the Air Transport Command Field at Miami, recently, minus his usual passenger, Lt. Gen. George H. Brett . . . The bomber's record attracted notice of several of the officers in the Pacific area and Alexander was streamlined to become Gen. Brett's personal plane in his long non-stop trips between Miami air fields and various theaters of war. In all, the bomber has flown an estimated total of more than 590,000 air miles in 3,000 hours of flight.

Beautiful photos and this would be an entirely appropriate "look".

Speaking of famous B-17s, I'd like to mention that Black Jack's Last Mission is now available on DVD. You can see some trailers that give a pretty good preview of it at http://www.B17BlackJack.com

[mustangdriver]

Amazing how clean she looks. Thx for posting. I'm now thinking this scheme would look best on her today. (soon)

The museum chose the time period it did for a few reasons. One is that it will display the B-17D to the fullest. It will be represented as when it was O.D. and gray wit the Swoose art work, but still has all of the D weapons on board. The museum is trying to do as much preservation as possible before restoration. If it was going to be nmf then there would be alot of things getting replaced in order to make it look like these pics.

[Steve Nelson]

Having looked her over last week, I can tell you the restoration staff will have quite a challenge putting her back into combat configuration. Almost all the interior fittings will have to be fabricated from scratch, along with the gun tub and the waist gun windows and wind deflectors.

Chris, I know the bombay was sealed up during her conversion..do you know if the doors are still in place? Our tour group was pretty rushed, and I forgot to check.

SN

[mustangdriver]

I believe that the doors are still there. I think the racks are gone. If you would have seen the condition the Northrop Dive bomber was in when it came to the museum, and now, you would have no worries about the level of care the Swoose is going to get.

[Steve Nelson]

Oh, I'm sure they can do the job..I remember seeing the carcass of the AT-10 in the shop back in the early '90s. I was just pointing out the amount of work it's gonna take..I look forward to seeing the final result!

SN