Memphis Belle at Duxford

[ShampooEfficient]

Beautiful.

[Dr Jekyll]

Simpo Two said:

I thought it was filmed at Duxford... but maybe they used both places. Wasn't there an unplanned belly landing during filming?

The B17s were based at Duxford while most of the flying sequences were filmed, the ground and take off/landing shots were filmed at Binbrook.

[aeropilot]

Eric Mc said:

deviant said:

How was the chin gun aimed and fired? I assume some sort of joystick from the bomb aimers position and it was just a kind of point and squirt affair...aim the tracers like a hosepipe?

Exactly. It was more of a detterent. The earlier B-17s were not fitted with much in the way of forward firing armament. The B-17F on;y had a hand operated machine gun on either side of the nose. The Luftwaffe realised that B-17s were weakly defended from frontal attacks and began to exploit that weakness with head-on attacks. The chin turret was an attempt to address the situation by beefing up forward defence.

The picture below shows a typical B-17G set up, with the original side mounted nose guns plus the remotely operated chin turret.

And here's the view from the front bomb aimers positions, taken by me when flying over southern California in B-17G '909'

[Brigand]

Nice pic, the bombardier certainly gets a big view of where he's heading!

[Mutley]

aeropilot said:

And here's the view from the front bomb aimers positions, taken by me when flying over southern California in B-17G '909'

Nice picture. It had me confused though, as i never thought a B17G had a gun right in the nose like that, I always thought it was remover in favour of the chin turret.

Only now looking at this on a decent screen, and its the arm rest i see, not a gun.

Edited by Mutley on Thursday 6th October 13:54

[Ayahuasca]

YesItsARover said:

Sorry, I'm going to attempt to put my spotter hat on!

Memphis Belle was a B-17F, shown here:

Sally B is a B-17G, depicted by the chin turret. Sally B was painted as Memphis Belle for the film, and half retains Sally B livery with the other half Memphis Belle, if I am right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_B

Memphis Belle is in Ohio in bits at the moment I think....

I have copy of that photo signed by her wartime captain, Robert Morgan. It shows her last flight in British skies.

[johnnyreggae]

Glad to see Sally B got away from Goodwood !

On the fantastic tour that weekend they commented that the field was a little shorter than they are used to

[aeropilot]

johnnyreggae said:

Glad to see Sally B got away from Goodwood !

On the fantastic tour that weekend they commented that the field was a little shorter than they are used to

Yes, I was surprised to actually see it there when I walked over to where the aircraft are parked!!
They are quite pedestrian in their take-off run.

Unlike a B-25 which is a veritable 'hot-rod' in the take-off run

[v8will]

I was fortunate enough to a tour around (inside and out) the Sally B a few years back. Lovely aircraft