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Minnesota Gas Station B-17

Mon Jul 11, 2005 9:33 am

Found this on the AeroVintage website, under B-17 news.
http://www.aerovintage.com/b17news.htm
Have any of you heard of a B-17 Gas Station in Mn before?
Some intersting stuff on the B-25 News page as well...

An interesting story comes from Troy Westrum about a B-17 tail section that eventually went into the static restoration of B-17G 44-83542, displayed at Kermit Weeks Fantasy of Flight facility at Polk City, Florida. Troy did a writeup on this tail section in the late 1980s/early 1990s that appeared in Warbirds International that had a few photos also.
"It might be interesting for you to know that I have a connection with the B-17 on display at Kermit Weeks Fantasy of Flight Museum. The fuselage section from the horizontal stab to the rear of the wing I recovered and sold to Tom Reilly in the early 1990's. Tom used this section for the static rebuild of the B-17 which you can walk through at Fantasy of Flight. It had been buried and used as a storm shelter. It had been on a "Gas-Station B-17" in Minnesota. The aircraft had become an eye-sore and was removed to a farm field in the early 1970's where it sat until about the mid 1980's. At that point the rear fuselage was removed and buried as a storm shelter. The engines,props,seats,wheels and instruments were removed and sold. The remainder of the ship was cut up and melted down into ingots by a guy with a mobile salvage business that stumbled upon it. This was about a year or so before I learned of it. What remained was piled up and burnt. I tried in vane to track down any other pieces that might have survived. I did find some oil shutter assemblies and some fuel tank cradles and a few other odds and ends. Eventually, a top turret and a belly turret turned up that came from the same area. I'm pretty confident that these came from the same aircraft but were not found by me."

Anybody heard of this

Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:58 pm

I had an old "Flypast" article that had a pic of this a/c, and now I can't find it.

Anyone remember this bird?

Joe
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