I was visiting the hilltop home of some folks from church Sunday afternoon, when suddenly I heard a low flying aircraft above us. I looked up and saw a rare sight: a vintage World War 2 bomber flying low and slow almost directly over us. I immediately recognized it as the four-engine B-17. As it passed over I noted that 1) it was a painted in green camouflage as B-17s were camouflaged through 1943 but not late in the war, 2) it had a chin mounted machine gun turret, the easiest way to distinguish the model, a B-17G, 3) it had a "triangle A" on the tail which means it belonged in 8th Air Force, 1st Bomb Wing (hence the triangle). I later found out that "triangle A" was the same Bomb Group (the 91st) as the famous B-17F, the Memphis Belle.
These clues were enough to lead me to the Nine-O-Nine (pictured below), one of the few remaining B-17s still flying today and in Kansas City for the weekend.
This Nine-O-Nine is actually a different B-17G, restored to look like the original Nine-O-Nine, which was cut up for scrap after the war.
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It was especially difficult to keep the car on the road while driving on 169 past the downtown airport when I noticed that the B-17 AND B-24 were both parked on the ramp next to the highway... I wish I would have had time to stop and go out on the ramp and look at them up close!!
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