depscribe's photos with the keyword: Aluminum Overcast

Well known Ohio newspaperman Terry Smith strafes Zanesville, September 22, 2016. The attack caught the city entirely by surprise and thusfar there has been no retaliation. Smith was at the twin port-side .50 waist guns of the bomber.

If you ever get a chance to pose for a picture with a B-17 -- do it. Athens News Editor and Publisher Terry Smith did, wearing a genuine military spec Snoopy helmet -- a gig bag for the head.

Some memories, even of war, are happy ones. B-17 crews were young men who turned into grizzled veterans in a hurry as they learned that youth's invincibility is often an illusion. Frank Girman survived his 35 missions -- there were a few close calls, such as the time his top turret got smashed by flak -- and went on to be an electrician in Brunswick, Ohio.

At the radioman's station behind the bomb bay, Frank Girman reminisces with Mark Easton, a relative by marriage, who has put together a video about the B-17 flight engineer and top turret gunner's war career. It was Frank's first hop on a B-17 since the Battle of the Bulge in early 1945, and though he's 93, he had better "air legs" than anybody else on the flight.

The picture now simulates the comforting view one might have had from a B-17 over Germany in the mid-1940s, with a P-51 flying top cover to keep those pesky German fighters occupied.

I noticed that there was a P-51 model as the airport's weather vane. Remembering how P-51s saved numerous B-17 missions by flying cover for the bomber groups, I made a picture with the hope of modifying it -- a lie that would illustrate the truth.

Majestic looking now, this silhouette once sparked terror in Axis industrial and military installations. They would come in waves, hundreds of planes at a time, "turning the sky black with bombers," as the saying went. Early in its career, the B-17 had to fend for itself against the Luftwaffe's fighter pilots, but by mid-war long-range allied fighters such as the North American P-51 Mustang would fly cover and keep the fighters busy. But nothing could distract the flak -- essentially fragmentation grenades that exploded near the bombers.

The B-17 lumbers -- that's the right word -- down the runway in Zanesville. Bombers were dump trucks compared to fighter planes' sports cars. Climbing at 300 feet per minute, the B-17 would typically cross the German border at 25,000 feet.

This is what the top turret gunner would see, a .50-caliber machine gun on each side. Flight engineer and top turret gunner Frank Girman said during his 35 missions he fired at two German fighters. "I didn't hit them -- well, they kept flying, so I guess I didn't," he said. "The guns jumped around, but that was a good thing, it was like a big shotgun."

A view of the plane's port wing and engines from the navigator's station. The Zanesville flight was on a 90-degree, clear day, with a bit of turbulance caused by the heating of air at different rates over different patches of ground -- the same thing that causes buzzards to circle in some areas to catch updrafts.

Taking a look from the seat right behind the cockpit is Athens News Editor and Publisher Terry Smith.

Frank Girman, 93, turns to watch the four radial engines on the antique bomber come to life. Until this day, he hadn't been on a B-17 for more than 70 years. When he did fly in them, his 35 missions included Normandy, the attacks on the Ruhr Valler, Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of the Bulge.

With the B-17 "Aluminum Overcast" firing up in the background, 93-year-old Frank Girman of Brunswick, Ohio, poses for a picture. He was flight engineer and top turret gunner on 35 B-17 missions over Germany in World War II. Part of the 546th Squadron of the 384th Bomb Group of the 8th Army Air Force, he flew out of Northamptonshire, England.

A unique meeting: WWII B-17 flight engineer and top turret gunner Frank Girman and EAA B-17 pilot Tom Ewing rotate one of the plane's four engines. The radial engines tended to allow oil to pool in the cylinders, causing catastrophic engine trouble if undetected. So before flight each engine must be turned by hand, seven revolutions. It's not an easy task, and if oil has gotten into a cylinder it becomes impossible until a crewman removes the spark plug and allows the oil to drain.

The Experimental Aircraft Association's B-17 "Aluminum Overcast" waits on the ramp at the Zanesville, Ohio, airport. The fuly restored World War II bomber's name stems from the saying that the skies over Germany would become black with allied bombers -- the B-17 chief among them.