C-97G back in the air
 

The Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation's C-97G is back in the air. On 7th November it departed Floyd Bennett Field for Reading in Pennsylvania, its new home base.

Video here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5581...5512346967481/

I hope they can bring the old darling over to the UK at some point soon - what a bird!

Indeed. Sure brings back memories of a line of them in the BOAC maintenance area at LAP.

That must have been quite a sight, nothing like a retro remembrance! My only experience with a live C-97 was on a summer's evening in Suffolk, late 70's peering over the fence to either Bentwaters or Woodbridge when a clattering of engines started and then one after the other, perhaps 10 KC-97's of some mid-western ANG filed slowly past me, crew waving away and then with their jet engined assisted power plants roared off into the sky heading home after an european detachment. No camera, only fading memories....

I wish the owners of the C-97 all the luck in the world, and I hope that it can make it's way over to europe to the airshows in the near future.

Which Floyd Bennett Fiield—in Brooklyn or KGFL?

GF

Brooklyn GF.

I recall seeing a couple of ANG KC-97s airborne in the twilight of their career, one heading along Green 1 into Europe, the other into Mildenhall. From the comfort of a Miami Airport terminal in 1992 I watched an Agro Air KC-97 start down the runway - both outboard engines emitted huge puffs of smoke and the take off was abandoned!

Treaders,

Me too. On my first transit through Miami in 1985, I saw a Stratocruiser taxi out from the “boneyard” on the north side. Mine managed a successful takeoff!

There often seemed to be a pair sunning themselves in Cockroach Corner - think there was a third that met a tragic end in a built up area somewhere in Central America.

The BOAC ones were the B-377 Stratocruiser, similar in appearance but a distinctly different civilian airliner, with notably different internal systems.

The 1987 accident at Mexico City was one of the Haiti-registered Miami-based ones. I recall a Boeing statement the day after the accident that "We didn't know any were still being used". Since, despite the country of registration, they actually operated from a major US airport alongside its principal runway, and were a notable sight to all and well known to enthusiasts and featured in publications, this did not say a lot for Boeing's record keeping. I went through there a couple of times in the early 1990s and they were still there, but never saw one move.

Strats at London Airport, August1958:

https://i.imgur.com/pYFjxdE.jpg