B-17 Bomber Liberty Belle

The Liberty Belle, a restored B-17, was at Chesapeake Airport today, and Josh and I went to visit. One of the visitors had been a pilot for the 96th Bomb Group in WW2, and the plane crew was giving him celebrity treatment.
If we'd had a spare $430 each, we could have taken a 45 minute flight; as it was, we watched her land, and then got a chance to go through.
From the outside, the plane is a little smaller than I'd expected; from the inside, it's a lot more cramped than I expected. You pretty much have to get on hands and knees to crawl into the nose, where the chin turret and bombardier's stations are. We looked into the cockpit, then through the bomb bay to the after section. It looked like a tricky squirm to get back to the tail gun; and as for the ball turret, Josh said "that's why the military emphasizes duty so much--so someone will accept that kind of job when they get assigned to it." We got out, took some pictures of the outside--Josh took 150 pictures in total--and then went around to the front, climbed up the ladder and went through it again.