It's Witchcraft!

The planes came in a little late, I had a nice chat with a number of people awaiting their arrival. The B-24 landed first followed by the B-17 which taxied up behind it, and since I was behind the fence didn't allow for a good photo.
More pictures to come.
Ok, question: Do you want bigger pictures or what? The click-and-make-it-bigger is just 600 wide, want more? Let me know, I can do all sorts of things, I'm a graphics-guy, that's my job (or was) - but I try to respect peoples' bandwidth.

UPDATE 5/19/05:
We have a request for a pretty BIG picture (1200x372).

Let me know what you think, or if you know how to fix the damn HTML so so that you can scroll-around it when you click on the magnifying glass - doing that blows it up out of the frame, and cuts off the nose of the plane. Scroll-wheel just makes it go up and down. Not good.
UPDATE: I've tried replacing the "scrollbars=no" command with a "yes." Will proceed with other variations on a theme.

It's raining and overcast with a low cloud-cover today and I haven't heard any of the beautiful 1187Hp GR-1820-97 Wright Cyclone radial engine sounds - they may be grounded on account of the weather. I'm going to drive over and check. Yep.

With the weather today they were mostly grounded, but with the skies clearing somewhat, expecting to take a few flights of passengers ($400 per person) up and about this afternoon. It pays the bills on these expensive-to-operate machines.
When exactly did John Moses Browning invent the .50 BMG, and what got it to this point?
Oh yeah, 1918 is when he came up with it...and this baby can pour out 550 rounds of .50 cal. slugs per minute - that's nine per second.

The Germans determined that they couldn't come up behind a B-17 because there were just too damn many guns pointed at it, with 13 on the "G" model, and since overtaking them from behind exposed them to too much firepower and took too damn long - they adopted the tactic of coming in head-on. With a Messerschmitt Bf 109E's top-speed in excess of 350 miles per hour(engine sound) (or a Fock-Wulf FW190 top-speed 400+ Mph.), and the B-17 traveling into the target-zone at over 200 - the total closing speed was huge, God-knows-what 550-600+ miles-per-hour?
The Luftwaffe pilot, with guns set to converge at 400-meters, was coming in at 220 meters per second, and he had less than one second in which to aim and fire on the B-17 before they had to pull away or hit the tail, or plow into another plane, or... As related by Fw (Feldwebel=Sergeant) Fritz Ungar, JG54 Aug. 1943-May 1945 (p.18).
Dang.

UPDATE 5/20/04:
Oh yeh, all of both the aircraft's guns are throroughly de-milled.
I read about the German tactic downtown in a bookstore - title of the book: Jane's Battles With the Luftwaffe, The Bomber Campaign Against Germany 1942-45. (see head-on tactics above)

More click-on big pictures (900x670-something):

B-17 Bombardier seat.
B-24 Front turret.
B-24 Waist gunner position (right-side).
Let me know if they're too big.


Got s'more pictures...