‘Flying Fortress’ In the Skies Over Columbus

COLUMBUS, Ohio—When the “Liberty Belle” roars to life, she sounds like a herd of Harley Davidsons.  The smoke pours out of the engines for a few seconds and then she’s ready for a new adventure.

“Every time is an experience,“ says her pilot, John Shuttleworth. “You’re really awakening a giant. It’s a lot of fun.“

The “"Liberty Belle”“ is one of only a handful of B-17 Bombers that are still airworthy.  She flew over Columbus Monday afternoon.

With the exception of a few modernization requirements, the airplane’s controls are exactly the same as they were in the 1940’s.  Exposed cables run the length of the cabin.  Pulleys do a lot of the work.
Shuttleworth says the manual controls are a bit heavy and a little unresponsive but this is what pilots had to worth with during their war missions.  Crews would spend 8 to 10 hours in freezing conditions,
thousands of feet above their European targets.

“When you look at the airplane, what you’re really seeing is the way it was during the war,“ Shuttleworth says.

B-17 Flying Fortress Bombers

12,732 built by Boeing

4,735 lost in combat

Fewer than 100 still exist

Fewer than 15 can still fly

Between 1935 and 1945, Boeing built nearly 13-thousand B-17’s.  Nearly 5,000 of them were lost in combat in World War Two, the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the Vietnam War.  At the peak of their use, more than a thousand B-17’s could be assembled for a single mass-combat mission.  Today, fewer than 100 exist and less than 15 can still fly, including the “Liberty Belle”.

Shuttleworth and a crew of dedicated volunteers fly the “Liberty Belle” to dozens of cities.  They are on a nationwide tour to educate and honor the memory of the thousands of World War II veterans who went down in aircraft just like her.

Her namesake was the only plane to make it back to her home base after a disastrous bombing mission over Dusseldorf in 1944.  A few years later, she was scrapped in Europe. 

The new “Liberty Belle” was built late in the war and never saw combat. She’s always been stateside.  She was a survey plane for a mining company and then a test plane for Pratt & Whitney for 20 years.  A historical society saved her in the 1960’s but she was broken in half by a tornado in 1979.

Then, Shuttleworth says, along came a man named Don Brooks and his Liberty Foundation.

“He took the front half of this airframe and the back half of another airframe and executed a 14-year, $3.5 million restoration project to build a B-17 to honor his father who was the original tail gunner on the
“Liberty Belle”.“
Today, she soars again with a new mission to educate. 

Hundreds of veterans come to see her every year.

“They turn into kids again,“ Shuttleworth says. “They jump in an out of the airplane like they did when they were 18 and they talk about their experiences.  In some cases, it’s the first time they’ve shared their stories with their family and that’s really special.“

Every B-17 veteran gets a chance to autograph the airplane.  There are hundreds of names scattered around the “Liberty Belle”‘s fuselage.  And every name comes with its own story.

“Every chance we fly it or every opportunity we get is such an historic privilege to be able to fly the airplane,“ says Shuttleworth.

The “Liberty Belle” is on a national tour.  She will be at Columbus’ Bolton Field this week only.  Public flights will be available on Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12.  To reserve a seat, visit
http://www.libertyfoundation.org or call 918-340-0243.  (Seats are $430 for non-Liberty Foundation members and $390 for foundation members.)

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