Let me try to help out Larry66…
While I can’t share his opinion of the Dakota as a warbird, I can understand where he’s coming from.
My father flew B-17s in the war with the 15th AF.
As a boy I read all the books about Mustangs, Thunderbolts, Spitfires and of course, B-17s. Those were warbirds. Because of their rarity. I had never seen one in person, just in the old black and white photos of the books I got from the library. They were from a time long before I was born, when dad was young…and very skinny.
But a Dakota was alive and real. My dad regularly flew them…there was one outside his offce, the base “hack”. I could see it, touch it, hear it.
It wasn’t a piece of 20 year old history, it was real and current.
Yes, I knew that it served in the war, I’d read about D-Day and flying the Hump.
But the C-47 was something else.
It wasn’t an artifact, it was part of my life.
See what I mean?
Having said that, I’ll have to say…not out of silly nationalism but out of family pride, that the B-17 is my favorite plane of World War Two.
My father wasn’t a hero, but I’m proud of the part he played in defeating the Nazis. A boy from a small farm town in Wisconsin went to war in it…and survived. And it changed his life forever.
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