One of the few remaining flying Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses has crashed and burned while making a forced landing in the US.
Sources in the US report that on Monday the Boeing B-17 ‘Liberty Belle’, owned by Miami’s Liberty Foundation, made an apparent emergency landing in a cornfield southwest of Chicago after a reported engine fire shortly after taking off from Aurora Municipal Airport in Illinois and was consumed by fire. The B-17 was on its way to Indianapolis Regional Airport, after spending last weekend offering flights to WWII veterans.
Witnesses said the pilot maneuvered the B-17 between an 18-metre tower and a row of trees before landing in the field, but the aircraft was engulfed in flames once on the ground and could not be saved.
Boeing built 12,731 B-17s between 1936 and 1945, and the four-engine heavy bomber dominated WWII in service with the US Army Air Force and Royal Air Force. Only 56 B-17s survive today, and of those remaining only 13 are currently reportedly airworthy. And while a number of airframes are undergoing restoration around the world in the hope of flying again, the Liberty Belle’s demise marks a sad turn for the few remaining flying B-17s.
Manufactured in 1944, the Liberty Belle was sold as scrap in 1947, and then again later that same year to Pratt & Whitney for US$2700. While it suffered major damage when a tornado dumped another aircraft on it in 1979, it was restored to airworthy conditions in 2004 and had been flying ever since.
Seven people on board escaped without injury and the US National Transportation Safety
Board is investigating the incident.
UPDATE: Mick Ryan has informed us that the Boeing B-17 ‘Liberty Belle’ didn’t actually “crash and burn”, as has been reported. Rather, what actually happened was a fully controlled emergency landing with an on board fire. It was only because emergency services could not reach the aircraft that it was destroyed. To read the full story from the Liberty Foundation, the operators of the Liberty Belle, click here.