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The Boeing B-17 heavy bomber, designed in 1934 and accepted by the Army Air Corps in 1940, was the worlds most formidable long-range bomber of the World War II era. Incredibly tough and much beloved by both air and ground crews, it was dubbed the Flying Fortress in the belief that with its rugged construction and heavy armament it could defend itself in a variety of bombing missions.
Although 12,000 B-17s were built and flown during World War II in all theaters of action, only a few remain today. The Confederate Air Force (C.A.F.), a worldwide nonprofit organization of which I am a member, owns two of these aircraft. In keeping with its goal of maintaining World War II aircraft in flying form, the C.A.F. is restoring these planes to original combat condition, and last summer sponsored a 26-week national tour of one of the B-17 Texas Raiders’ airplanes.
When the large metropolitan area in which I live (Cincinnati, Ohio) was chosen as a tour stop, our local C.A.F. flight group served as hosts. It was our feeling that a reunion of local former B-17 combat aircrewmen, together with the aircraft they had flown, would be an event with lasting memories.
I was assigned the duty of locating at least 10 former crewmen to serve as honorary crew of the Texas Raiders’ airplane during the seven-day public display.
The enormous task of locating 10 select people from a metropolitan area with a population of over one million was at first overwhelming to me. But a call to a columnist on one of the local newspapers resulted in a short mention in his column that a search was on for former B-17 combat aircrewmen.
It would be an understatement to say that I was not prepared for the response! Phone calls and letters completely swamped me for the next few days, as I attempted to record names, addresses, etc., of each respondent.
The hastily recorded information, written on any scrap of paper available, suddenly became disorganized. Recording it was very timeconsuming, because I was constantly adding to and changing my master list to keep it in alphabetical order. So I turned to my computer.
I actually have two Timex Sinclair 1000 computers — one at home and one at work. I used the Timex Organizer data-base program to keep records of all customer information for my locksmith business, and thought I could do something similar with the B-17 information.
After a few minutes with the TS 1000 and the Organizer, I produced a data-base format that included not only name and address, but also such pertinent data as rank, crew position, group, squadron, etc.. as well as if a crew member had been shot down in combat and/or had been a prisoner of war.
The Timex Organizer is a great program for data storage and retrieval, and in a short time the scraps of paper and sketchy information started to take shape in a completely “organized” manner. As the complete file started to grow I began to notice similarities in some of the entries and decided to search certain categories for related data.
PLAYING WITH THE DATA BASE
The Organizer enables the user to display information from any category in alphabetical or numerical order, so I started my search with a listing of all former prisoners of war. A printout from my Timex 2040 printer gave me an interesting list, so I then asked for those POWs who had been shot down in certain areas. (Berlin, Gelsenkirchen, etc.). Again — interesting data that matched some of the names on the POW list. How far could I go with this? Next I asked for groups and squadrons by number, and it became apparent that a lot of these guys had been on the same bombing missions.
During this period, word of my search — and of the anticipated arrival of the B-17s at Cincinatti’s Lunken Airport — began to spread. The response from former crewmen increased daily, but data was quickly entered and arranged when it arrived. This was an easy process for me, but it wasn’t always that way.
TIMEX INDIOSYNCRASIES
Many Timex users complain of difficulty in storing and retrieving data to and from a tape recorder. This is probably one of the weaker points of the TS 1000, and one that gave me a lot of trouble in my early days with the computer. I had many frustrating hours of “no-loads” or “no-saves.” and often thought of seeing if the computer would sail like a Frisbee. Patience and downright stubbornness finally enabled me to overcome the difficulties. I have learned from experience the proper volume level (on the tape recorder) to use for each program save or load, and now rarely experience a glitch.
While building my file, I loaded information on crewmen each morning in one of my 1000 is known to “white out” at any time), I immediately saved to tape and then reloaded for my next entry. In total, I probably had 40 or 50 saves and loads while building mv crewmen file.
At that point my evenings were spent comparing data I had entered during the day. I kept breaking out information under different categories. Asking for Zip Codes in numerical order showed that several crewmen lived in the same Zip area. Further search located two crewmen on the same street, 10 homes apart — and neither was aware of the other. They had a great reunion on their street when I notified them of their proximity. Two other men, friends for 15 years and co-workers in the same industry, were not aware that each had been B-17 crewmen and POWs.
In total, we located 78 former B-17 combat aircrewmen and were able, with the use of the TS 1000 and the Organizer, to match up about 60 percent of these people as being in the same bombing group, bombing squadron. POW camp, or as having been shot down on the same mission.
FROM PILOT TO TAIL GUNNER
My original goal of locating 10 former B-17 crewmen to serve as honorary crew, regardless of their position on the aircraft, now became more difficult, as I had to select a crew from the long list of names available. But, going back to my Timex I was now able to select a full crew, from pilot to tail gunner, in the actual positions they had flown, and in the order in which they had responded to my request. This firstcome, first-served method was acceptable to everyone concerned, and the printout from my 2040 quickly produced the honorary crew.
Cincinnati’s City Council members issued a proclamation naming July 9, 1983, as B-17 Day. The Mayor was present at formal ceremonies on the airfield to read the proclamation and honor these gallant flying men of World War II. Following the official ceremonies, the group was invited to lunch and an open house at the local airmen’s club, where they spent an afternoon swapping stories and showing old photos and memorabilia from wartime days.
The plaudits were loud and long for our efforts in bringing this group together. Many of these men had attended previous reunions, but never with “their” aircraft present, nor with such detailed information to bring their pasts to life.
I am not a full-time locater of former anythings, and I am sure that names and addresses could have been written with pencil and paper, but matching related data categories without a computer would have been too timeconsuming for me to undertake in the short time frame we had for planning.
It was a most memorable and successful event. And the hard work and research required was fun and easy with my TS 1000, Organizer, and 2040 printer.