THUNDERBIRD

Air Classics, Aug 2004 by O'Leary, Michael

Many of the Forts were then flown to Altus, Oklahoma, including 5718 which arrived at that location on 21 November 1945. Altus Army Air Field came into being on 16 January 1943 and it operated as an advanced flying school. When the last class graduated in April 1945, over 5200 pilots had been trained in the strange-looking Curtiss AT-9. With its training mission over, Altus was transferred to the Air Technical Service Command and made ready for the storage of surplus military aircraft. Soon, the field was packed with B-17s and B-25s but also included B-24s, P-38s, P-40s, P-47s, and P-51s. During early 1946, over 2600 aircraft were parked at Altus. One of the most famous aircraft in storage was combatveteran B-17F Memphis Belle.

All the aircraft were available for purchase but, unfortunately, there were few purchasers. On 12 May 1947, a sealed bid sale was conducted for aircraft at the field and Esperado Mining Company of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, won. By May 1948, all the remaining aircraft at the field had been scrapped.

However, a few did escape. Agents from IGN arrived at Altus and inspected the stored B-17Gs. They selected four virtually new aircraft for purchase including 5718 (the other three were 44-85643, 44-85733, and 44-83729). Amazingly, these aircraft were sold completely stock and the only missing items were the .50-cal machine guns! French civil registrations were applied to the aircraft and 5718 became F-BEEC.

After a careful inspection and replacement of any items that were considered non-airworthy, the former bombers were flown to France. At Villacoublay, the planes were modified for their new life with IGN and this included stripping out the majority of military equipment and adding camera mounts, ports, magnetometers, etc. JGN would go on to purchase a rather incredible total of 14 B-17Gs, 13 of which were operational while the 14th was used for spares.

It was not long before F-BEEG was plying the world's airways on a variety of mapping assignments. When F-BEEC operated in South Africa for one year in 1965 and 1966, it received the South African civil registration ZS-EEC before reverting to its French marks.

Growing a bit tired, JGN retired its fleet of Forts and F-BEEC was sold on 12 June 1984 to well-known British Warbird collector Doug Arnold. Registered GFORT, the plane was flown to Arnold's base of operations at Blackbushe. However, he did not retain the aircraft overly long and the bomber was sold to Stephen Grey's Patina Ltd. in 1986.

At this time, several American collectors were expressing interest in the former bomber but it was Robert Waltrip who stepped up and purchased the B-17G on 9 june 1987. Now all that remained was to get the aircraft back to Waltrip's home base at Houston Hobby Airport in Texas!

Lots of work had to be done to the machine for its transatlantic trip. The aircraft was flown to Duxford where it was prepared for its mission. Assigned the US civil registration N900RW, a decision was made to paint the bomber as s/n 4238050 - a B-17G that flew with the 303rd Bomb Group, 359th Bomb Squadron, as Thunderbird. This was a historic machine that had successfully completed 112 combat missions.