Tillamook is about one hour from Portland.  Recently some loggers discovered a Navy WWII plane.

By TERRENCE PETTY (AP)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Loggers working near the Oregon coast discovered the wreckage of a World War II-era warplane in woods not far from a naval air station decommissioned in 1948, military and police officials said Thursday.

Investigators said human remains may be in the aircraft.

The origins of the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, a U.S. Navy dive bomber, are a mystery. The crash site is not far from two naval air stations that were active during World War II.

“There are so many different air stations they could have been flying from,” said Christian Gurling, curator at the Tillamook Air Museum, site of the now-defunct Naval Air Station Tillamook.

A U.S. Navy team worked at the scene along with the Oregon State Police and the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office. Also involved in the investigation is the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing In Action Accounting Command, a Hawaii-based military joint command that tries to account for Americans missing in action.

State police bomb technicians checked the site Wednesday afternoon and found no sign of unexploded ordnance.

A logging company discovered the wreckage on March 18 in a heavily wooded area and notified law enforcement officials, who then notified the U.S. Navy.

Officials have found a wing, a tail section, landing gear and other debris spread out over about 200 yards, state police said.

Gurling said the Tillamook station was originally an airfield for blimps guarding the Pacific Coast, but airplanes were also there in later years.

The SB2C Helldiver, which operated off aircraft carriers, replaced the Douglas SPD Dauntless. Gurling said it carried two crew members — the pilot and a radio operator, who was also the gunner.

The Helldiver, also known as “the Beast,” was a formidable warplane, but Gurling said it was also “plagued by problems.”

“In the earlier planes, the pilots were told to not dive for fear the planes would fall apart,” said Gurling. “Which wasn’t good for a dive bomber.”

Associatd Press writers Abby Haight and Tim Fought contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

For those of you interested in a how-to.

Here’s a fun video to watch:

http://zenoswarbirdvideos.com/B17.html

My grandfather was the pilot for the B-17 “Flak Shak” (42-97307) until it’s forced landing in Sept. of ’44 in which the plane was no longer flyable. He was also the last to fly Relcutant Lady in which his crew was forced to bail out a couple of weeks later. I know that many crews “shared” B-17s depending on which were flyable.

I have some files from an 8th Historian named Bill Varnedoe (who was also a navigator I believe) that documents crews, their missions, the B-17s they flew and on what dates.  I helped Bill piece together Flak Shak’s serial number and also sent him my grandfather’s crew photo for his records.  We have some other things from when my grandpa was in POW camp that are pretty interesting including a book in which different men signed, drew, and contributed stories and poems to.  Other than that, the pic below is all I’ve ever seen besides a drawing my grandfather did in the aforementioned book of the Flak Shak.

Jim Waters Aka Mudue8

Click a name in this hierarchy diagram to learn more…

03/31/43 Enlistment
03/22/44 Special Orders
03/23/44 Orders
03/24/44 Ordnance
04/18/44 First Mission-Berlin

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Source

This snippet is from Tales to Noses over Berlin by Ray Bowden, page 63.
These missions took place a couple of months following Ihlenburg and LaMotte’s
missions of 44/04/18 over Berlin and 44/04/22 over Hamm.
This is more just about the plane “Wells Cargo”.
Jerry Ramaker would return to Berlin twice more on 24th May and again on 21st June,
both times flying in Wells Cargo. His crew had been assigned to the plane after their first
mission, to Hamm, on 22nd April and named it after their pilot, Lt. Charles Wells and the
famous Wild West stage coach company of Wells Fargo. The B17G had originally been
delivered to the USAAF back on 18th December 1943 after rolling off the line at Boeing,
Seattle. “The crew had an idea of painting a stage coach with wings instead of horses,”
recalled Jerry Ramaker, ball turret gunner, “but we only got as far as the name, painted in a Disney-style – redo on a yellow back-ground. We also had our jackets painted likewise by a guy on the base”.
The crew’s combat tour in Wells Cargo also took them to many tough targets
including Hamm, Hanover, Augsburg and Zwickau. Charles Wells earned the DFC and
later commented about his plane to a local newspaper, “Wells Cargo always brought us
back and, likes it predecessor Wells Fargo, carried and delivered the goods successfully.”
The Wells crew finished their combat tour in late June 1944 and returned to the States –
Wells Cargo soldiered on for another full year before retuning to Bradley Field on 24th
June 1945. In December of that year, the plane was finally dispatched to the smelters
furnace at Kingman, Arizona.