Published: November 05, 2009 12:21 am         

WWII gunner, POW gets chance to fly in restored B-17

Dick Bland did something Wednesday morning he hadn’t done in 64 years — he landed in a B-17.

Bland, a B-17 waist gunner during World War II, flew in the Experimental Aircraft Associa-tion’s restored B-17G “Alumi-num Overcast,” which was at Enid Woodring Regional Airport as part of the vintage aircraft’s 2009 “Salute to Veterans” tour.

“I’ll tell you,” Bland said when he was back on the ground, “when he brought that thing in, that was as smooth a landing as I’ve ever been in.”

The last time Bland flew in a B-17, Feb. 14, 1945, his landing was not nearly as smooth.

That day Bland floated down on a parachute after his bomber, dubbed “The Fox” after a pub in the English town where the bomber was based, was shot down by anti-aircraft fire while on a bombing mission to Crux, Czechoslo-vakia. His thought as he drifted earthward that day? “I am not wanted here.”

Bland was captured by a pair of Germans and taken to a prisoner of war camp at Oberursel. He carries in his wallet a photo of himself as a young airman, taken by the Germans as he was being held in solitary confinement and interrogated after his capture. The dark-haired young man in the photo looks older than his years. The photo was found in the National Archives and sent to Bland by a historian named J. Curt Spence.

Bland spent the rest of the war as a POW, losing 40 pounds in the process. He hadn’t been back in a B-17 since.

When one of his buddies, retired Colorado Highway Patrolman Bob Cranford, found out the Aluminum Overcast was coming to town, he contacted the EAA and inquired about Bland getting a ride on the old aircraft. The EAA agreed and waived its normal $425 fee for the 30-minute flight for the former POW.

Bland didn’t want to spend Wednesday’s flight sitting in the belly of the plane, his wartime post as a gunner on one of the .50 caliber machine guns protruding from the aircraft’s fuselage. Instead, he sat right behind the cockpit, where he could see.

Returning to the air in a B-17 brought back memories, said Bland, who also served as assistant engineer on The Fox.

“Some, I guess,” he said. “It was noisy. I was more interested in the instruments in the cockpit. I wanted to know how much oil pressure we had, how much this and that.”

The flight took Bland and his fellow passengers east of town, over Breckin-ridge, past Garber and over Covington.

“It was a little bumpy,” he said. “It was a little bit rough up there today.”

The plane also was smaller than he remembered, he said.

“When I walked up this way, the first thing I looked out there and thought, ‘Damn, that thing’s sure little,” he said. “I thought at the time, back when we were flying these things in the war, I thought I had a lot of room back there in that waist. I got in there today and, by golly, I don’t know how I operated in there.”

Bland was the lone waist gunner on the crew of The Fox, so he fired the guns on both sides of the bomber.

“The other waist gunner on our crew chickened out when we got to flying in Europe, he wouldn’t fly,” Bland said. “That meant that he was on permanent K.P. the rest of the war.”

The Fox, the English pub after which Bland’s B-17 was named, had a special meaning for the crew.

“We went over there every evening and drank,” Bland. “A guy in England had written me, and I asked him if he’d go down there and take a picture of that pub. He did and you ought to see that pub. They’d refurbished that thing since then. It’s all painted and looks beautiful. It looks a lot better than it did then.”

The Aluminum Overcast continued on to Arlington, Texas, to continue its tour. If the aircraft ever returns to this area, Bland said, he would highly recommend anyone interested in vintage aircraft sign up for a flight.

Just as long as you get to land, not jump out.

“It’s better,” Bland said of landing in a B-17, rather than bailing out as he did so long ago.