acdii Report post Posted May 29, 2013 An actual warbird that served in its own way during WWII. It started life as a B17E model and trained crews for active duty over seas, because it was an early model, it never saw combat, and was relegated to training and eventually was sent to a special site where it was converted into one of 2 cargo/troop carriers, the XC108 program. This one is well documented and an extremely rare one because its complete with the exception of the engines, they have yet to be located. It is being fully restored to factory flight condition and should one day be fully airworthy. This is what it looked like back in the mid 80's when they first found it. You can see what it looks like now on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/12595DesertRat Some other planes that were in the XC program was one for Douglas MacArthur, Bataan, http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_bombers/b17_15.html Last year I drove to Chino CA to get access to the only surviving B-17E that had actual combat, and was shot up on a mission in the Pacific, landed safely in a swamp with all member surviving and was eventually located and recovered, but too late to be able to restore it, the Swamp Ghost, but it still had much of the original parts still in place that we needed to know about that were damaged or destroyed on the Rat. I have a lot of pictures I took of that one in the photo gallery on the Rats page. Give it a visit, and if you have a Facebook account, please give it a like, we are trying to reach the 2595 like mark. 1 corncobs reacted to this Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
