I was sitting in the radio operator's station of a World War II B-17 bomber, somewhere over upstate New York, when pilot Dave Tallichet walked back and asked me a question I'll never forget: "You want to fly this thing?"
It was September 1990, and what started as an aerial photography assignment had already been extraordinary. I was aboard the B-17 that starred in the film "Memphis Belle" on a six-hour cross-country flight, capturing images from the aircrew's perspective - the view from inside looking out - that no book had shown before. But I had no idea the mission would end with me at the controls of a Flying Fortress, heading home to Dayton, Ohio, where my family waited on the tarmac below.
Recently, I took a trip to the Southwest for some long-overdue family visits. While in Palm Springs, California, we made a side trip to the Palm Springs Air Museum, and I was thrilled to reconnect with that same airplane — the one I flew 35 years ago.
The flights were for a book I was working on, and my interest was to make new color images from the perspective of the aircrew from the inside looking out. At that time, there were no books with that point of view. So the airplane needed to be a B-17 restored to its wartime appearance. I had been introduced to a pilot who had the ideal example. Dave Tallichet's B-17 had just been featured in the film "Memphis Belle." I made contact with Dave, and we worked out the details. At that time, the bomber was near Boston. If I could get to Boston, I could fly with him cross-country, and he would make a stop in Dayton.
I could hardly believe my good fortune as the arrangements fell into place.
Mid-September is the best time of year for any kind of aerial photography — golden light. The flight would be around six-plus hours, and we would take off midafternoon and fly into the late-day sun and the sunset. I flew to Boston with several cameras and a whole lot of film. Way before the digital era.
This was a mission in a B-17. Long enough to spend the time to concentrate on the photos I wanted to create. I loaded my equipment into the bomber, which included clamping a motor-driven Nikon to the gunsight in the ball turret, which hangs beneath the body of the airplane, with a remote trigger. The camera was looking backwards — the gunner's view.
Dave and his copilot got settled into the cockpit and soon all four 1,200-horsepower radial engines were running, and we taxied to runway 27 at Hanscom Air Force Base, straight into the September sun. As we raced down the runway and took off, I fired the Nikon with the remote as we flew toward Ohio. The photographs were just the images I was looking to get.
The next few hours, flying over western Massachusetts and upstate New York, were filled with making photos from each crew position — from the clear Plexiglas nose, the cockpit, the gunners' positions, all the way to the tail gunner's view.
I went through all the film I had brought with me. At that point, film was cheap compared with the opportunity. I packed the cameras and stowed the gear near the rear door.
What took place next is still almost beyond belief.
"Come on," Dave said, motioning me to follow him to the cockpit, where the left seat was vacant. "You sit there and get comfortable." I put my feet onto the rudder pedals, and he said, "Grab that yoke." Then he told me what not to touch and pointed to the compass and said, "Just go that way." The copilot told me that I had the airplane. For the next part of an hour, I can only say that dreams do come true.
As it began to get dark, Dave took over, and I was able to stand between the cockpit seats. The American landscape unrolled beneath us. After a while, Dave pointed to a glow on the horizon ahead and said to me, "That's Dayton — your hometown." We landed on runway 24 left and taxied to the ramp. I knew that waiting for us was my wife Rosann, my three kids, my parents, and my lifelong friend Paul. Dad's description tells the story: "We could hear the bomber before we could see it. And then like an apparition from another age, a fully restored combat bomber appeared onto the brightly lit tarmac. The pilot cut the switches, and the four propellers spun to a stop."
Back in the cockpit, Dave slid the window back and looked down to the ramp. He looked at me and said, "Is that your family?" "Yep," I said. He then said to me, "Well then looky here, there is only one way out of here for you and that's through the nose hatch — just like Gregory Peck in 'Twelve O'Clock High' — and don't screw it up!" That is what I did, never having done that before. I let myself down, and there was my family and Paul, who just walked up to me, and we shook hands.
The B-17 from the 1990 movie "Memphis Belle" now in Palm Springs is being returned to flight status by Dave Tallichet's family and will soon be on the airshow circuit again. Dave, a WWII 100th Bomb Group veteran B-17 pilot, passed away in 2007. He was a larger-than-life character.
Blue Skies and Tailwinds is presented by SNC, a global aerospace and defense firm, with support from the Wright State University Aviation Science and Technology Program. The series is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
