Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum Restoring B-17
After spending time in Canada and Washington, D.C., the “City of Savannah”
has come home – well, almost, to Pooler – where it will educate new
generations while rekindling memories of past glories among older ones.
The B-17 bomber will reside in the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum. It was
brought down in sections on a flatbed truck from the Smithsonian’s Air
and Space Museum in January and is being restored with the help of local
companies and donated materials. It is expected to join other vintage
aircraft in the museum early next year.
One of 46 remaining B-17s, the plane was one of the last of its kind
built in 1944. However, the war ended before the plane could be
deployed. In subsequent years it was used as a fire tanker in Canada and
for educational purposes before it was acquired by the Smithsonian and
stored in a hangar at Dulles Airport. The Smithsonian, looking to make
room for other aircraft in the hangar, donated the B-17 to the Mighty
Eighth Museum.
Brenda Elmgren, the museum’s chief administrative officer, notes they’ve
been seeking a B-17 for the museum for 14 years and describes the plane’s
condition as “very good.” She says the restored plane will serve as an
educational tool, showing school children what it was like to fly in a
plane she refers to as a “crude tin can.”
It was a large tin can, however, measuring nearly 75 feet long and with a
wingspan of some 104 feet. It weighed 36 tons and had a maximum speed of
263 mph. Nicknamed the “Flying Fortress,” the B-17 carried members of the
Mighty Eighth into battle. The 12,000-plus planes dropped more bombs
during the war than any other aircraft.
The original “City of Savannah” was part of that aerial armada. The plane
left Savannah, birthplace of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in 1942, from
Hunter Field in 1944 and headed to England, where it flew bombing
missions to Germany with the 338th Bomb Group out of Knettishall Airbase
in East Anglia.
Adding to the lore of 13 being an unlucky number, the B-17 did not
complete its 13th bombing mission. The plane was flying over Germany on
March 5, 1945 when enemy guns knocked out three of its engines. The crew
placed the controls on autopilot and parachuted to safety – sort of; they
were all captured by German troops. The unmanned plane didn’t enjoy a
safe landing, however, flying all the way to Russia before crashing into
the Black Sea.
The pilot, 24-year-old Ralph Kittle of Ringgold, Ga., along with his
crew, was eventually released from prison camp by American forces and was
awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and Purple Heart. He
became an attorney for International Paper and died in 2001 at the age of
80.
One B-17 pilot who is still alive is 93-year-old James S. Munday, who
lives in Savannah. He recalls his time piloting the B-17 during World War
II with a clarity that belies the 66 years that have elapsed since he
flew his last combat mission.
An Illinois native, Munday joined the Air Force in 1941, right after the
attack on Pearl Harbor. “It was either that or be drafted into the
infantry,” Munday explains. “I had flown before the war and wanted to
continue.”
Munday took nine months of flight training in a B-24. Right before
heading to England, however, he learned he would be flying the B-17. His
training consisted of three landings in Kansas. Munday says it was a
“very big adjustment” going from the B-24 to B-17, noting the position of
the landing gear was the biggest difference. “The B-24 was easier to
land,” he says.
Munday flew the B-17 mainly from England to France during his first seven
missions. Unescorted by American fighter planes, the B-17 presented an
inviting target for German planes and antiaircraft guns. He describes the
action as “real combat” and says the B-17s were banged up but still the
“best thing going.” It was anything but a comfortable flight, however.
With no heaters onboard the B-17, temperatures dropped to 20- to 60-below
zero at altitudes of 25,000 to 35,000 feet. “It was bitterly cold,”
Munday recalls. “Men lost fingers and toes. You jumped up and down to try
and get warm and watched for enemy fighters. It was a miserable
existence.”
Munday’s travails, as it turned out, weren’t limited to the air.
In the summer of 1943, Munday and his nine-man crew were flying a bombing
mission to a supply depot near Paris when the plane was shot down. The
crew parachuted to safety and all but one survived.
Separated from his crew, Munday, who had sustained bullet wounds to the
legs and back and had trouble walking, stayed in the woods for three
days. He managed to connect with members of the French resistance and
was given civilian clothes and a phony ID. Munday made it to Paris and
boarded a train filled with German soldiers. His ultimate destination was
Barcelona, which offered the closest safe haven and was under English
control. Munday says only one German soldier, an officer, checked his ID
on the train. The other soldiers, he adds, “minded their own business.”
Munday forged onward, meeting up with some gypsies in France after his
leg started bleeding again and he had been left behind during a trek
through the mountains by a guide. According to Munday, a gypsy doctor
“got him to walking again” and he eventually reached Barcelona. Following
a car trip to Gibraltar during which he had to frequently hide in the
trunk, Munday flew back to Scotland. His four-month odyssey had covered
some 3,000 miles; he had walked some 300 miles during the approximate 900
miles he traveled from France to Spain. His motivation: “I didn’t want to
be in a German P.O.W. camp,” Munday explains.
Munday, who continued to fly the B-17 after the war in doing weather
surveillance, says he becomes nostalgic when he sees a B-17. “I have good
memories of the B-17,” says Munday, a retired Air Force colonel.
“Whenever one flew over, we would run out and look. I felt very safe.
There was never much fear of it coming apart.”
Munday’s memories were rekindled further three to four years ago when he
was invited by a crew he knew to travel on a B-17 from Savannah to Panama
City and took the controls for part of the flight.
“It was a very pleasant flight,” Munday says. “They still fly great.”
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