{"id":676,"date":"2011-05-10T10:57:18","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T15:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/?p=676"},"modified":"2023-08-10T09:52:19","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T13:52:19","slug":"portrait-flight-engineer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/2011\/05\/10\/portrait-flight-engineer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Portrait of the Blogger as a Young B-29 Flight Engineer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, museums were much less formal affairs, such that a young lad could sit down at the flight engineer’s station<\/a> in a partially restored B-29 Superfortress and play with the throttle controls:<\/p>\n

\"Off<\/p>\n

The time? The mid-1970’s. The place? The National Museum of the United States Air Force<\/a>, in Dayton, Ohio.<\/p>\n

The Air Force Museum has a walk-through B-29 fuselage<\/a> on display currently, painted in the likeness of the Korean War-era “Command Decision”. I would imagine this display to be the same one I sat in some thirty-five years ago, though at present the fuselage is completely restored, the various crew stations sealed off with plexiglass.<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>If you note the “Larry + Cathy” graffiti scratched into the paint just above our intrepid and amazed youth, I suppose you can see why they had to seal it off, but there’s something lasting about actually sitting in that seat, moving the throttle and mixture controls, that conveys a sense of history as a living entity, rather than a dusty display. I doubt my lasting fascination with all things aero would be quite so potent had I not had the moment happily captured above.<\/p>\n

I’m sure, at that moment, I imagined myself to be not unlike this gentleman, an actual B-29 Flight Engineer.<\/p>\n

Oh, to slip the surly bonds of earth…<\/p>\n

(Image<\/a> courtesy of Gary Minnis<\/a> via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike license<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, museums were much less formal affairs, such that a young lad could sit down at the flight engineer’s station in a partially restored B-29 Superfortress and play with the throttle controls: The time? The mid-1970’s. The place? The National Museum of the United States Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio. The Air … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[64,163],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","tag-b-29","tag-museums"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pedXm-aU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6167,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions\/6167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}