B-29 Bomber Takes Off! | Mid Atlantic Air Museum WWII Weekend

B-29 Bomber Takes Off! | Mid Atlantic Air Museum WWII Weekend

[Music] how are you doing Keith i’m doing great how are you doing excellent excellent we haven’t spoken in a while but uh just for folks who are new to the channel or folks who um want a little bit of context I my name is Walt and I do tours here on this little Pacific island of Saipan and my tours uh have evolved into World War II tours and historical tours so I give tours of Saipan and tours of Tinian and the Saipan is significant because the battle of Saipan was one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theater in World War II and uh it paved the way for the battle of Tinian which secured Tinian for the US and and on which the US was able to build runways and from which the bombers were able to take off to bomb Hirosh Japan um as well as specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki so I have tour clients who come to these islands and they want to check out Saipan and see where the battle took place and they also want to see uh Tinian where the Inola Gay and Box car took off in addition to the other B29 and B25 bombers that bombed Japan and a few months ago uh Keith Schmidt found me online and he uh set up a tour of both islands and we toured the islands had a great time and I’ve been doing this for many years now and every few every so often one of my guests is so uh so charming and charismatic and full of great stories that we keep in touch and I’d like to share that experience with the channel members so um Keith sent me a video of something interesting and rather than me simply uploading the video to the channel and um uh sharing it with you I decided to ask uh Keith to actually come and talk about it so to give our viewers a little context Keith uh first tell us a little bit about yourself what was your interest in Saipan and Chin what’s your connection and then we’ll move on to the videos that you shot well I’ve always been interested in you know kind of a World War II buff and the Pacific theater has always been of interest to me what was specifically interesting about um getting to Tenion was I have a relative by marriage who served on the um Indianapolis and the last um mission that the Indie that the Indie served was uh delivering the uh nuclear core uh to Genian for the Hiroshima bomb so that that was a special special interest for me to to to make that connection excellent excellent and so you went to a um an air show could you tell us a little bit about that because I was unfamiliar with that air show what is the air show and what did you go to see well it’s a World War II weekend that’s put on by the Mid-Atlantic um Air Museum in uh Reading Pennsylvania um a lot of my travels um are connected by um a lot of my former colleagues when when I worked at Shitakqua um Shitakqua institution i was there for 40 seasons and one of my earliest um colleagues and now good friend um is a member of the World War II um paratrooper demonstration team and they were jumping this weekend so that was a a special motivation for me to go um and and see that happen um and also to be able to see all the war birds that were there especially the uh B29 dock it’s the only one of two B29s that are still flying actually Fifi the other one is is down for some maintenance right now they’re having issues with a couple of the engines that have to be repaired and then there’s uh there was a B25 that was flying there as well um Panchito so it was interesting about those i learned a few things um especially about the B-25 um they used the B-25s that were launched from Saipan to bomb Tenion and it turns out that the that that bomb run was the shortest hop of of any bomb run in the entire war to enable construction of runways to allow for the longest bomb bomb runs of the war with B29s interesting so the B25s the B-25s took off from Saipan in order to bond um after the battle of Saipan correct yeah okay keep going uh I like to learn a lot and I’m sure our viewers are interested so what else did you learn um that was there was a busy weekend and a and a lot to a lot to take in um it was a lot a lot of it was just being um having the ability of being that intimate with the all of the aircraft you see a couple of the videos where I mean we were um we had some bad weather so we actually used several of the aircraft for um getting out of the rain hiding out of the wings and the fuselages to stay dry um getting to meet the the guys on the the the demonstration team was a was a was very very interesting um my friend was uh u able to jump um his name is Paul Parsons uh was able to jump in Normandy um last year to celebrate the uh 80th anniversary of D-Day okay so right which just passed a few days pretty big milestone for him so it was and it was great to see him i haven’t seen them in three or four years lots of other really really good aircraft uh there was a P-51 a lot of uh a lot of World War II naval aircraft um there was even a a Messor Schmidt 262 that was a a replica that was flying so lots of lots of aircraft to to observe and and actually feel the the thunder of of those those old radial engines on the on the bombers right right right that’s the thing uh even though even though I’ve been doing tours you know I can I can watch videos on YouTube or I can only imagine but being able to be there to actually experience uh what you know the like you said the power and the the thunder of the engines as it’s taking off so you sent me three short videos the first one was a is a B25 that’s preparing just if you can recall tell us what’s going on here so the first one is a B25 that’s preparing for takeoff yes u they were actually um you could take rides on on almost all the aircraft that were there so um that was uh parked just on the on the on the opposite side of a a fence so on the flight line but we were within yards of of the aircraft so um on on startup uh we were on the uh behind the airplane and it was it was interesting to get a face full of um oily smoke and a lot of uh lot of hot air blowing off of uh off those engines um as it was heading out for um for rides it was also did did a couple of demos so um it was it was really interesting to see it start up taxi out and on the other side of that uh the B25 was a a P-51 getting ready to to take off as well so it was quite a lineup of of aircraft it It’s pretty unusual to see a 4 engine airplane uh with um you know prop plane flying these days you know everything all the big jets are pretty much ho hum and to see something that’s um just that good-looking i mean um in mic in meticulous condition and just uh just the sound it’s it’s you really you got to be there it’s it’s it’s visceral those of you who’ve been following us with the reper uh the uh the restoration of that we used to put 55gallon drums full of water in there to keep it from tipping on its tail yeah well you balance of course important to an airplane not only in the air but on the ground as well absolutely but the exciting part is we haven’t done our being interrupted by what you Oh I love it those short stacks really give it some character how many people were were at the air show i know we got a glimpse of them in the in the short video but roughly how many people uh older folks younger folks what what was the scene like um I think there’s a lot of families and groups there had to be I mean judging from the the parking which was at a fairgrounds um several miles away from the from the venue um sever that’d be several thousand people there okay and with what seemed like almost as many reenactors because they had um French village set up with with you with with costume civilians u um people dressed as partisans there were there was a um a Russian headquarters there was um German headquarters there were some um um German um equipment some artillery a tank um in addition to this to all the static aircraft that were there on display so there was there was a lot of activity all right interesting hopefully you got some photos of that uh if you do I’ll share that uh on screen as well the third video is a B29 taking off [Music] here’s Doc [Music] um please you have now become our de facto roving reporter for the discover side pan channel so anytime you uh come across any things of interest like this that might be of interest to the channel followers we have people who are interested in the culture of Saipan but also we have war buffs who are keeping their eye on what’s going on on the on Tinian with the repaving of the runways we have people who are interested in World War II and the Pacific Theater so anything to do with um events like this the reenactments and the air shows would be of interest to folks on Saip Saipan and people who follow the channel so I thank you for that really appreciate that anything else you want to add before we wrap this one up i just add that um the u Mid-Atlantic um Air Museum did a fantastic job with the show um everything was just just really well well thought out and well planned i think it’s it’s this was their 31st um presentation um okay the thing that impressed me the most and if I’m sure if you’ve been to air shows you know it’s it’s uh um the worst thing is parking um and he was uh this was just so well managed it was it was amazing i was uh from my car to the uh to the show uh with less than a five minute wait to get there and um what looked like an impossibly long line to get the bus back to the parking move so fast I I was gobsmacked um I was probably back in the bus in 15 minutes which was um unheard of like at most air shows i’ve I’ve waited for 90 minutes almost two hours to get get back to my parking at at some of the the bigger shows so we just applaud the folks that that organized it and I put it on your list of folks to see of shows to see excellent i’ll put a plug for them in the description and put them uh the link to the website on screen so people can um sign up so they ha do they do any other shows throughout the year or is that their one event their one annual event i I think it’s just their one event um I I haven’t done any research on on that but they do have they do have a a static display that’s that’s there all the time so um if they’re not flying you can certainly check out the aircraft right right excellent i’ll give people a link um as well so thanks for that really appreciate it so uh keep sending the videos and I’ll keep sharing them with folks on the channel thanks a lot Keith and I’ll see everyone in the next video charlie today is Craig Simpson here is the Jersey [Music] looks like it might be a little bumpy douglas AD5 Skyraider [Music] and here comes the zero couple this is Beach City Baby a C-53 [Music] [Music] there you are [Music] heat [Applause] [Music] heat oh my god all right let me uh stop this one and then if we get disconnected [Music] uh let’s see you might have to sign back in but we’ll start a a new session and talk about the celebrity stuff cool so I’m going to stop the recording now or we might get cut off pilot to Bombadel come on boys let’s drop one here for begging the king of God

A few helpful links:

www.maam.org (Mid Atlantic Air Museum)
www.b29doc.com
https://wwiiadt.org/

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