EAA AirVenture 2018 is but a fond memory, but the impressive aerial sights and sounds from the Fly-In are still available to us. The B-29 Doc and the B-17 Yankee Lady participated in the daily warbird show on Friday July 27th. Our friends at AirshowStuff were there and captured this awesome footage of the two heavy bombers as they thundered over Wisconsin. The clip was uploaded to You Tube by AirshowStuffVideos. Enjoy!
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The B-29 in the clip is Doc, a Boeing Wichita-built B-29A-70-BW (CN 10804, AF serial number 44-69972). Doc served briefly during World War II and was retained after the war as one of a group of seven radar calibration-tasked B-29s named after the Dwarves from the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The B-29 towed aerial targets for a time during 1955. In March of 1956 Doc was flown to the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake in California and, along with about 100 other veteran B-29s, was deposited on one of the complex’s many bombing and gunnery ranges for use as a target. There she sat for the next 42 years until she was recently restored.
The B-17 in the clip is Yankee Lady, a Lockheed-Vega-built B-17G-110-VE (CN 8738-VE, AF serial number 44-85829). This B-17G was accepted by the Army Air Force on 16 July 1945. The bomber spent time at Love Field in Dallas, South Plains in Texas, and Rome Air Force Base (AFB) in New York before being transferred to the US Coast Guard and converted to the PB-1G air-sea rescue configuration at NAS Johnsville in Pennsylvania. The USCG based her in San Francisco before putting her up for disposal in 1959. Bought for the princely sum of $5,887.93 in 1959, the aircraft did aerial survey and photography work until becoming a sprayer in 1965. Between 1966 and 1986 the B-17 was aerial firefighting tanker 34, though she took time off to star in the movie Tora Tora Tora during 1969. Between 1986 and 1995 the B-17 went through an extensive restoration, emerging as the Yankee Lady. Lockheed-Vega built 2,750 B-17 bombers during the war.
