0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u4YBwjQTdsI know some of the guys that were involved in this, very sad story, one guy got real sick and died and then they burn the plane to the ground doing a very stupid thing!
I just don't want to wind up missing a digit or limb. I can sometimes get in a hurry to get results.
absolutely amazing. back when i lived near Nellis AFB, they have a B17 there that people could fly in. How i salivated for the chance....
Quote from: wilsonphil on March 01, 2017, 10:04:42 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u4YBwjQTdsI know some of the guys that were involved in this, very sad story, one guy got real sick and died and then they burn the plane to the ground doing a very stupid thing!Man, that sucks! All that work. I guess He didn't want that bird coming home.
Also from what I know and have been told by people that were there(I was not) I don't think the plane would of made it too far after take off. Again very sad story for the people and the aircraft involved.
Quote from: wilsonphil on March 06, 2017, 06:13:00 PMAlso from what I know and have been told by people that were there(I was not) I don't think the plane would of made it too far after take off. Again very sad story for the people and the aircraft involved. . Whenever you started something that had been sitting along time, be prepared for the inevitable leaks. Be they fuel, hydraulic, air, whatever, expect everything to leak. The lines on that bird were 70+ years old. Almost inconceivable to believe the rubber would have been serviceable at all. If they would have gotten the thing into the air, it would have been on the wing of a prayer to get it any distance before it ran out of something... my view.
there is a huge backstory, but to make it short. These guys were out trying to get money to fly this thing home. The original plan was to install 2ea NiCad batteries to start the engines. At the time these batteries were about 8K apiece so a total of 16K. Well they didn't want to spend the cash and the company that makes the batteries would not donate/loan the units. So it was decided that since there is an APU in the back of B29 they would just get that running and use it to start the engines.SOOOOOO once they get there it was discovered that the diaphragm for the fuel pump for the APU was not good so they couldn't get fuel to the APU to get it started, one of the rocket children decided to just hang a 5 gallon gas can above the APU and gravity feed the APU. (are you seeing where this is going)All was good and they got the plane up to where it could be taxied, so they decided to do a couple "high speed" taxi's to make sure everything was good. Well since the 5 gallon fuel can was not secured very well during one of those high speed taxis the line or the can itself became "unsecured" and everyone knows what happens when you dump 100LL aviation fuel all over a running very hot APU.You can see the aftermath in the movie. its very sad that a B29 with just a little over 100hrs was destroyed because people didn't think. Very sad story all the way around.