Taking Flight In A Veteran Of Freedom’s Fight

By Jeff White

Newtown resident Mike Fitzsimons is no stranger to the cramped passageways and the cold, green, riveted steel of the B-17 bomber. And as the combat beast belched gray smoke in preparation for takeoff this week, he sat in an ovular compartment with a weathered, tan seat belt cinched tightly across his waist.

It is the third year in a row that Mr Fitzsimons has been aboard the B-17 Flying Fortress during its only area flight. As the plane prepared to take off from the tarmac at Danbury airport, exhaust seeped up into the bomb bay and ball turret. The low hum of the taxi was replaced by a cacophony of hydraulics kicking over. The plane was airborne.

Mr Fitzsimons promptly instructed the pilot to head toward Newtown.

As propellers fought the thermals into a fading autumn sun, Mr Fitzsimons recalled the men who manned the Flying Fortress not for pleasure, but for duty. “I think, ‘how thankful I am to be a part of such a great country, a country that produced such determined individuals,’” he recalls about his emotions during those magic minutes aboard the B-17. “People were so caught up in the war effort that they were willing to give their lives for the preservation of democracy.”

Ever since hearing about his great uncle’s maneuvers over the front lines during World War I, the Great War, Mr Fitzsimons has been in awe of warplanes. The great uncle was Uncle Frank, who was shot down by the Germans and lost his leg. The US would not let Uncle Frank fly anymore, so he joined the French forces, which were desperate for fighter pilots. Uncle Frank fought on.

When asked what intrigues him the most about warplanes like the B-17, Mr Fitzsimons answered, “The idea that there were 17- and 18-year-old kids involved in the war effort. They were a young group of cocky individuals ready to give their lives for the US.”

In previous years, Mr Fitzsimons has had his chance at the B-17’s stick, but not this year. Stringent FAA regulations kept the student-pilot strictly a passenger, which gave him ample time to mull over the reality of owning a portion of the plane.

Mr Fitzsimons has purchased the B-17, or at least a portion of the plane relative to the amount of money he contributed toward its purchase. Besides being able to claim part ownership of the Flying Fortress, the Fitzsimons family name will be recorded on the nose of the plane.

Perhaps it is a way for his future descendants to appreciate those who flew in the plane before them.

During World War II, the B-17 quickly developed the reputation for withstanding ceaseless volleys of enemy fire deep inside enemy lines. Committed to every theater of war, high school-aged boys flew myriad daylight bombing raids over Germany.

Through it all, the plane returned its crew back into the safe arms of the base. It was seen as a liberator, with the capability of bringing its men out of the grips of danger to fight another day.

Today, the B-17 mostly fights the glare of the waning sun during late afternoon fly-overs. There are only three B-17s in the country that are currently able to fly, and for much of the year the steel beasts fly back and forth across America for air shows and demonstrations, pausing for a few months for repairs. This B-17 at Danbury airport came in from Oxford Airport, and will soon leave for Mt Holly, New Jersey.

They are now mostly left for the curious to roam around in while stationed on the ground. It is hoped that the more people get inside these planes and see how they work, the more they will appreciate what wartime men did every day in the name of liberty.

For such a hulking, cavernous plane, the B-17 levels off smoothly in the air, and it was soon after takeoff that Mike and his guests — family members and a few of his employees he likes to take up each year — were up and poking around inside the plane’s belly.

Each took turns walking the narrow catwalk of the bomb bay to the cockpit, stationed just above the entrance to a gunner’s station. In all, eight machine guns protrude from the body of the plane, in strategic locations: two from each side, one at the plane’s top, one at the bottom, one at the nose and one at the rear.

A good portion of the plane’s middle is left open, the winds outside raking the faces of passengers as the plane continues to travel at 150 mph.

Walking around this tight, in some places dark, plane, being careful to avoid gun decks and long belts of ammunition rounds, one gets an appreciation of what it must have been like to maneuver in these cramped spaces during a battle, when every second counted.

But it is the sheer grace of the bomber that leaves the most indelible mark on the uninitiated. It was what first amazed Mr Fitzsimons when he clutched the control stick last year. “I was mesmerized by the grace that the plane had. It’s so big, yet it can negotiate through the sky in such a graceful way,” he recalled. “It’s the Cadillac of airplanes.”

Smoothly, the plane cast its shadow over Newtown’s painted, undulating hills. The serpentine Lake Zoar meandered into Lake Lillinonah. The green expanses of the Ram Pasture and the Fairfield Hills property separated forests as the setting sun made the tree tops glow in a rufous gold.

Mike Fitzsimons looked out through the pilot’s window at Newtown’s beautiful patchwork below him, a mere tuft of land in a country some people concluded 50 years ago was worth defending.

As the B-17 rode south down Route 25 toward the flagpole, Bobby MacNamara, a friend of Mr Fitzsimons, beheld the sight from the ground. Her husband was a pilot in World War II; she said watching the big plane bank around the flagpole was one of the most awesome sights she had ever seen.

Flying over the center of Newtown, the B-17 making large loops over the flagpole, was an almost perfect juxtaposition of scenes. There, a thousand feet below, the flag flapped its freedom defiantly in the wind; Mr Fitzsimons watched this, with a mind recalling the past, aboard a plane once charged to defend such freedom.