B17s Tokyo airport 1953!

[wolfracesonic]

Listening to Vernon Kay on R2 the other morning, he played a clip from the BBC archives about early Comet flights to Tokyo. In it mentioned his amazement at seeing B17s parked up there; surely not thought I but he was right!



What would they be doing there, SAR? One has what could be a radome under its chin, the other just a plexiglass nose; any thoughts?

Full footage here, it’s worth watching to see what’s in the box. It’s not Gwyneth Paltrow related…

[aeropilot]

wolfracesonic said:

Listening to Vernon Kay on R2 the other morning, he played a clip from the BBC archives about early Comet flights to Tokyo. In it mentioned his amazement at seeing B17s parked up there; surely not thought I but he was right!



What would they be doing there, SAR? One has what could be a radome under its chin, the other just a plexiglass nose; any thoughts?

Full footage here, it s worth watching to see what s in the box. It s not Gwyneth Paltrow related

Certainly, the B-17 with the radome under the chin is a SB-17G, which would be one of 130 odd B-17G's that were converted post war for search and rescue use, with under chin radome in place of turret, plus lift rafts in place of bombs etc.
The aircraft with no radomes, are likely to be CB-17G transport conversions of the B-17G.

[wolfracesonic]

[Eric Mc]

The aircraft they were flying on was G-ALYP, which was one of the Comets which suffered explosive decompression over the Med and led to the permanent grounding of the Comet 1.

Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 29th July 17:17