The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

‘Wings of Victory’ is what today’s Latin title translates to, and it’s the name of a fantastic aviation museum group which flew two WW2 era aircraft to the 1931 vintage Allegheny County Airport, found in Pittsburgh’s West Mifflin section. The airport is built on top of a steel industry slag heap, as much of West Mifflin is. Wings of Victory were offering public facing tours of their equipment, which drew me in.

My neighbor Dwight turned me onto the outfit’s presence here in town, so I checked their website and schedule, and drove over to the airport to buy a ticket for the ‘ground tour.’

The price for that was supposed to be $15, but I think that the lady at the till figured me for a senior citizen because of the gray beard, and only charged me $10. Hey, maybe this ‘crazy old bastard’ thing isn’t just all terrifying doctor’s appointments, after all.

There’s discounts!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Taking a ride in a plane this old just ain’t in the cards for me, as I’m fairly unlucky – and certainly not at $500 a seat – which is what the ‘air tour’ cost. Yikes. The ground tour ticket led me onto the deck at the airport, where the two museum planes awaited. They are both still in working order, I’d remind.

There was a B-17 Flying Fortress (above), and a B-25 Mitchell.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The B-25 is one of several reasons that many people around the world rue the day that someone in their government decided to start a war with the United States. It’s the same model of the planes (developed under the command of General Billy Mitchell) that the American Military had designed the ‘Doolittle Raid’ around, which struck the Japanese home islands with a surprise bombing experience that occurred in April of 1942, and was led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle.

This was just the beginning of a vulgar display of industrial prowess which led first to the Battle of Midway, and then the 1944 emergence of the B-29 Superfortress aircraft (which carried massive fire and explosive bombs, and then the Atom Bombs) just a couple of years later.

The physical embodiments of ‘eff around and find out,’ American style.

Lessons learned by a nervous world, afterwards, included the idea that when a giant is sleeping you don’t antagonize it unduly.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Part of the ‘ground tour’ involved being able to actually enter the plane’s interior and do a walk through. Observationally, the crews on these planes were rather skinny fellows of small stature.

I realized that I was way too fat and old to have defended my country in the Second World War very quickly. You climb a few steps on a normal ladder, and then get down on all fours inside for a quick crawl to an internally installed step ladder that takes you into the ‘neck’ of the craft. The pilot and radio operator’s area was off limits, but I managed to crack out a couple of zoomed in shots.

This one was gathered on the B-17, btw.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The B-17 was clearly the crowd’s favorite, and had the longest line to get onboard. There were Grandparent and Grandkid combinations all over the place, and the kids in particular were going nuts over all this excitement – especially with all the machine guns which were arrayed all over the things.

Some of the folks from the Wings of Victory outfit were telling tales and reporting history, and it seems that both planes saw action in the European theater of WW2.

The B-25, in particular, was one of only about thirty survivors of the model which can still fly.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I got on the line to check out the B-17’s interior, which was pretty cramped within, truth be told.

Shots of the B-25 will be on display tomorrow.

Back then, with more.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.