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B-29 Doc Arriving at Oshkosh

"FIFI" and "Doc" are now finally together, both parked near each other at Oshkosh (somewhere I read that this is the first air show to have two flying B-29's together since the 1950's). Last I read, both aircraft will be flying together on Friday and again on Saturday. Also on Saturday there will be a "bomber parade", featuring formations of the B-1, B-2, B-52, both B-29's, two B-17's, several B-25's and the A-20, and possibly more, all flying, to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the 8th Air Force. In addition, on Wednesday they will be putting as many of the B-25's in the air together as they can, to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid (they are hoping for 16 B-25's - most have already arrived).

Photo via Warbirds News.

 
Heard from the Miss Mitchell crew that the B-25's are all supposed to be flying in the show today and tomorrow. Of the 16 that they were hoping for, they will have 13 altogether.
 
I haven't done any research into it, Moses, but it has been said quite a few times on Facebook over the past 24 hrs or so, and I believe it to be true, that this is the first time since the 1950's when they were still in military use.

After the 50's, besides "FIFI", the only other B-29 that flew with any sense of regularity was "Fertile Myrtle", in the 1970's, and it never flew with "FIFI" and it never flew much - it was only ever marginally airworthy and never flew past 1980 except for a rather scary attempted ferry flight after Kermit Weeks bought it. Until "Doc" first flew last year, there were only two other B-29's that I'm aware of that flew at all since the 1950's in addition to those already mentioned - one being the Duxford-based IWM B-29 "It's Hawg Wild" that was flown from the US across the Atlantic on a ferry flight in 1980, for which it only flew the legs of the ferry flight and never was intended to fly more than what was needed to get it to Duxford - and the other being the March AFB static B-29, which David Tallichet flew into March AFB on a one-leg ferry flight with the landing gear locked down.

Yesterday, in addition to the race track pattern the B-29's were flying, they did join-up in formation (as my previous post link shows) and had a B-25 camera-ship leading the formation, so you know there are going to be some great air-to-air photos published in all of the warbird/vintage aircraft magazines of the B-29's flying together.
 
Fantastic footage! Gave me goosebumps, especially when the B-25 joined in.

Makes me think about those long missions over the Pacific...
 
Video from the flight engineer position aboard "FIFI" looking out at "Doc", flying off the wing: https://www.facebook.com/b29b24crewchiefscorner/videos/1655869271122173/

Some video of "FIFI" flying off the wing/in-trail of "Doc": https://www.facebook.com/jerry.palmer.121/videos/1814153551933180/

Photo by Scott Slocum, taken from the B-25H camera ship, of "Doc" and "FIFI" in loose formation (I imagine there will be a number of photos that will be published from this flight in the various magazines): https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.ne...=a63f2f349a4ea938798ed4f0fb2700b4&oe=59EFE0B7
 
More B-29 pics by Scott Slocum, via EAA:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/eaaairventureoshkosh/36202664916/sizes/k/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eaaairventureoshkosh/36202665826/sizes/k/

Both B-29's were up and flying together in yesterday's show too, but the flying had to be cut short very prematurely because of the Blue Angels display (much to the displeasure, it sounded like, from the B-29 crews). "FIFI" had a hydraulic issue on landing roll-out which required "Doc" to make a go-around, which provided a nice low-pass for the photographers/videographers, as captured in part of this video shot yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxkodLnmYck
 
Seeing the B-29 pulling out of the missing man was pretty cool. I was hoping we'd get the B-17, B-29, B-52 pass that Barksdale got, but it was not to be. The Wednesday show got poured on, but at least the B-1 was able to make its passes. (Having seen the night show every year, that was the one thing I was amped for anyway.) Watched from my friend's hangar party last night. Who went there? We should all meet up next year.
 
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