I usually find that pilots do not like football. For years I wondered why this was. Then in dawned on me – pilots like to keep the ball in the middle!

eheheheheheheheh nice one 😀

JDK, the Ramstein accident was terrible, but it even helped understanding the safety limits of the airshows of the time. Nowadays the manouver called “cardioide”, the one of the accident, has been modified in order to avoid the solo pilot to cross the formation and fly towards the public. I’ve seen lots of potentially dangerous displays anyway, even in the recent months (and we can’t forget about the last horrible accident in Ukraine..), I think it’s just a matter of not letting yourself go too much when displaying..
A curiosity: the two aircraft that collided during Ramstein were the ones of the P/Os Nardini and Nutarelli, who were airborne and in active duty of F-104s during the Ustica accident.. a sad coincidence? But that’s another story guys..

Alex

This is an interesting question Jules, I cant decide between the waist and ball turret gunners, the formers because they stand and expose most of the body without protection, the latter because it’s just stuck in that damn small ball hanging under the plane. I read of a poor ball turret gunner who was stuck in the ball and the plane had both landing gears stuck. The poor gunner was killed when the pilot was forced to land the aeroplane: they tried everything and kept on flying until the fuel was finished, but couldnt find a way to save that poor soul. 🙁

Alex

hey, check those italian beeches! 😀
Anyway can u tell me when these were taken? There are only a few remaining Beeches here (they’re C-45 actually) and a pair of them are the glass nose version. Ben when I’ll come up there remind me to tell u the nice stories I heard about her 😉

Alex

lol i luv the way u r always so “politically correct” moggy 😉
The mod is a hard job uh? :D:D:D:D
U r right, there’s not a “best” in absolute: last year (2004 i mean) we had a nice airshow near rome and the patrouille suisse made a nice display too, most of it were close formation flypasts, but the final opening with flare shooting was really impressive 🙂 Their show was not that technically comparable to the Frecce or Red Arrows, but nonetheless it was an original and appealing display 🙂

Alex

Alex

Continuing to wrack what I laughingly call my brain on this.

I’d have thought, if you were going to do work on a temporary nature to fly it on three, the most you would do would be to build an aerodynamic plug over the missing engine, as on the C47 glider. You wouldn’t go to all this effort.

To me this looks like the machine is in the middle of more extensive work but just *why* escapes me. Maybe it was to be some sort of ground trainer where 2 engines would be sufficient?

maybe the engine, cowl and mount were heavily damaged and the best thing to do was to remove them.. the next step is to take out all the useless weight like turrets and weapons, but I wonder why all this job for a single B-17, when many others were scrapped right on the spot..

Alex

…will check with the Beech boys…

Run run agile run agile run agile ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnn!!! 😀 😀 😀
Sorry I just couldnt resist!!! :p

Alex

ben, they’re talking about god ol’ beeches, where r u mate?? 😀

Alex

well said mate, italian dehumidiers rock!!! 😀 😀 😀 😀
There was a silly commercial here about delonghi dehumidiers where a chap living in venice buys one of them and the day after he opens the window and a gondolier is in the middle of the dried canal bed screaming “The canal! Who dried the canal???” 😀 😀 😀

Alex