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A wild ride.....
Flying a bombing mission out of Foggia, Italy, our B-17 caught one h__ of a lot of flack.
All four engines were still running, but ALL flight instruments had failed including the airspeed. Since we were returning from the bombing mission in formation, we didn't really need most flight instruments. Except for the approach and landing.
When we arrived over the base at Tortorella, we peeled off, flying the landing pattern in trail formation. Considering how to plan my approach with no air speed indicator, an idea came to me. " Hey. We'll just fly in trail behind the ship in front of us, so that on the final approach, we can establish a rate of closure to ensure that our approach would be above stall speed."
Well, that morning, when we took off, the steel mat runway was covered with three inches of slimy mud. It had been raining for weeks. Airplanes taking off and landing just . . pushed the steel mat deeper into the mud. Every time an airplane took off or landed . . more and more slimy mud had pushed up on top of the mat. So as we approached the mud-covered runway,
there were now three or four inches of slippery slime on top of the steel mat.
We were not worried about coming in 'hot ' . . until I called for flaps and our copilot replied: " We don't have any [ flaps ]. They're not coming
down " . It was too late to crank them down, by hand. We weren't about to go around again with no airspeed indicator.
Now, due to our ' hot' approach speed, we didn't touch down until we were half-way down the mud-covered, pierced steel strip.
The airplane in front of us made a normal land
(Continued on page 3)
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