![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/22WpnC8:
Oh, I thought I mentioned that one recently!
Two parts to the story– #1 I was on a roller derby league, and picked a nom de skate, as was standard practice at the time. I go by B a lot since that’s my actual initial, so I was looking for things that start with that letter, and remembered the B-series bombers, and looked around at those. I decided to go with the B-17 in the end, because of the relatively uncontroversial (I mean, it’s still an instrument of war) record of that particular craft– mostly known for its use by the Mighty 8th, who used it for daylight raids of military and industrial targets, instead of the night terror raids that to be fair the Germans started okay, I’m not taking a swing at the British here. But anyway.
It’s a gorgeous plane. And #2, the plane was given a bunch of nicknames– the Flying Fortress, and also the Queen of Bombers, because while it was basically instantly obsolete, the planes’ terrible overengineering made them so robust that there sprang up a whole sort of mythology around them. And they also made a good name for themselves in the airlift that broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin after the war, which was at least nominally humanitarian. So.
(The sort of sad joke was that the maintenance crews hated the B-17, because they’d limp back with half a wing missing and all full of holes, but loved the B-24, which was the other medium/heavy bomber of the time– a much more up-to-date design– because if a Liberator took a hit it was going down with all hands, so there was never anything serious to fix. They came back shiny or not at all. We have a customer in the camera store who used to be a tail gunner in a Liberator, and he’s the one who told me that.)
The queen of bombers, the B-17.
In a configuration that Tumblr would let me have.
Have I ever written a WWII AU about literally anything? Nope! One of these days, though.
Oh, I thought I mentioned that one recently!
Two parts to the story– #1 I was on a roller derby league, and picked a nom de skate, as was standard practice at the time. I go by B a lot since that’s my actual initial, so I was looking for things that start with that letter, and remembered the B-series bombers, and looked around at those. I decided to go with the B-17 in the end, because of the relatively uncontroversial (I mean, it’s still an instrument of war) record of that particular craft– mostly known for its use by the Mighty 8th, who used it for daylight raids of military and industrial targets, instead of the night terror raids that to be fair the Germans started okay, I’m not taking a swing at the British here. But anyway.
It’s a gorgeous plane. And #2, the plane was given a bunch of nicknames– the Flying Fortress, and also the Queen of Bombers, because while it was basically instantly obsolete, the planes’ terrible overengineering made them so robust that there sprang up a whole sort of mythology around them. And they also made a good name for themselves in the airlift that broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin after the war, which was at least nominally humanitarian. So.
(The sort of sad joke was that the maintenance crews hated the B-17, because they’d limp back with half a wing missing and all full of holes, but loved the B-24, which was the other medium/heavy bomber of the time– a much more up-to-date design– because if a Liberator took a hit it was going down with all hands, so there was never anything serious to fix. They came back shiny or not at all. We have a customer in the camera store who used to be a tail gunner in a Liberator, and he’s the one who told me that.)
The queen of bombers, the B-17.
In a configuration that Tumblr would let me have.
Have I ever written a WWII AU about literally anything? Nope! One of these days, though.
