@ Santa Maria, CA
September 2024
The Erickson Air Collection’s B-17G Flying Fortress “Ye Olde Pub” makes a photo pass during the 2024 Central Coast Airshow. A Stateside WWII veteran, this Lockheed-built B-17G was equipped with bombing radar and configured as a bombing pathfinder aircraft before conversion to a TB-17G for weather recon/electronic countermeasures duties. Later on she was converted again, this time to a ETB-17G and used for electronics experiments. One last active duty conversion was to a JB-17G, where a turboprop powerplant replaced the nose of the B-17! Retired in 1959, she was a freighter, and then an agricultural sprayer aircraft before a crash in 1976 ended that career. Rescued by the Vintage Flying Museum in Texas, she was restored to a wartime configuration and named “Chuckie”. The Military Aviation Museum bought Chuckie in 2011 and put a chin turret back on to finish the restoration to a B-17G configuration. In 2013 this aircraft became part of the Erickson Aircraft Collection and was renamed to “Madras Maiden”. Later on, the chin turret was removed and she now wears the livery of “Ye Olde Pub”, the subject of a well known WWII incident. “Ye Olde Pub” was a B-17F that had been severely damaged by German fighters during a December 1943 bombing mission. One German fighter had the opportunity to finish off the crippled bomber but chose not do so, and instead escorted it over and past German-occupied territory.
