The Memphis Belle is at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport on Saturday and Sunday. The trip is sponsored by the Liberty Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving aviation history and honoring veterans. A 45-minute B-17 experience, with about 30 minutes in flight, costs $410 for Liberty Foundation members and $450 for nonmembers. It’s tax-deductible. The airplane costs $1.5 million annually to remain flying.
For more information, go to www.libertyfoundation.org or call 918-340-0243.
Take a flight on the Memphis Bell
Saturday and Sunday, usually from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. $450 for 30 minutes in flight moving from station to station in the bomber and 15 minutes in ground history, at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, 1 Aviation Way, Atlanta. Ground tours between flights. The Liberty Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to maintaining historic aircraft.
Information: 918-340-0243, www.libertyfoundation.org/schedule.html
They were so young — farm boys and city kids, all of them suddenly called men. The U.S. Army gave them uniforms and readied them for a global conflict.
That was Rudolph Phillips’ job. He taught them the intricacies of aiming a .50-caliber machine gun and blowing enemy airplanes out of the sky. The world was at war, and war demands young lives.
“They were so full of life,” said Phillips, 91, a Woodstock resident.
And they were taking to the skies in heavy bombers such as the Memphis Belle.
Phillips and the Memphis Belle, a B-17 Flying Fortress, came to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon. Both went airborne for a trip over the city.
For the airplane, it was the first stop in a 50-city nationwide tour to raise awareness of the nation’s dwindling ranks of World War II veterans and the machines they used. The bomber, used in the 1990 film “Memphis Belle,” will be available for tours and flights Saturday and Sunday from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport.
For Phillips, the visit was “a trip back in time.”
The B-17 arrived at the airport at 1:37 p.m. With its long wings and low profile, it resembled a bird coming in, long and low. Its four engines, totaling 4,800 horsepower, sounded a one-note symphony so loud that the air vibrated. On either side of the nose cone was the painted image of a shapely young woman, not wearing a lot, her head turned in apparent modesty, the belle from Memphis.
Phillips stepped slowly to the starboard side of the plane, where a tiny hatch opened into a darkened fuselage. A smiling man in a leather flight jacket extended an arm. Phillips ducked his head and entered on shaky legs. He’d not been in a B-17 since 1945.
Moments later, the big engines coughed, sputtered, then roared.
A better plane?
Experts say that the B-24, the Liberator, was a better bomber than the B-17. It flew faster, carried more bombs and did more destruction to the Axis powers than the Fortress.
But to the guys who did the bombing, the B-17 was the plane of choice. It simply could take more abuse — anti-aircraft fire from the ground, hostile fire from enemy fighters. A famous photo from the war shows a B-17 flying back to its base in England, daylight showing through its fuselage where an enemy airplane struck it.
The first B-17 debuted in 1935. A newspaper reporter eyed its armament — machines guns on each side, as well as a ball turret below that allowed a gunner to aim at anything sneaking up — and called it a “flying fortress.” The name stuck.
Aircraft manufacturers built more than 12,000 B-17s in the ensuing decade. Nearly 5,000 were lost in combat, many of them in the war in Europe.
Today, 13 B-17s are still flying.
‘Machine of war’
The big plane bounced down the DeKalb-Peachtree tarmac. Wind whipped through its open windows and hatches. The landscape slid past in increasing velocity, buildings and corporate jets and trees. In the distance, people stopped what they were doing to watch.
And then, airborne. Phillips unlatched his seat belt. He reached for a gun, the same sort of weapon that he taught boys to use, and rested a hand on its barrel. He looked out the window: rush-hour traffic building.
The Fortress rose to 1,000 feet and leveled off, heading south. In moments, it was skirting the eastern edge of Midtown. It swept over downtown in a wide arc. The sun slipped out of the clouds, winked, slid back in. The bomber’s pilots set a course to the airport.
Erk! The B-17's fat rubber tires yelped as the plane landed. The engines' roar subsided as the old machine taxied back to its original spot. It had been airborne 15 minutes.
Phillips ducked his head again, carefully crawled out of the hatch and stood straight. He walked slowly back to a warm building. Mission accomplished.
Phillips left the Army in 1946. He returned to Georgia and tried his hand at various occupations — car sales, insurance adjusting and selling Bibles. For more than a decade, he sold Bibles door to door and recruited others to join his sales force. The Lord apparently blessed that enterprise.
“I made a lot of money selling Bibles,” Phillips said.
In the early 1970s, he got on the ground floor of selling Toyotas and retired from that business. These days, he lives in a house facing Lake Allatoona.
And, like so many veterans, he remembers the war. Phillips, who never dropped a bomb or shot a machine gun at an advancing German fighter plane, showed others how it was done. It was grim work.
He looked at the Memphis Belle, olive-drab and still menacing looking. It was not a comfortable machine, he said.
“But war is not comfortable,” he said. “And the machines of war weren’t made to be.”
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