WWII Weekend

By: Alex Kingsbury


The four propeller engines cough to life and the war machine's aluminum skin, no thicker than a For Sale sign, begins to wobble and rattle as the it rolls down the tarmac. The passengers stare intently at the 60-year-old rivets holding this skin to the airframe as the roar of the engines grows louder and the plane slowly leaves the ground.

There are not many B-17s still flying and those that are have long ago retired from the bombing duties for which they were designed. This plane, The Yankee Lady, now takes aviation enthusiasts and vets for short trips back in time aboard one of the most memorable aircrafts of the Second World War.

One of the passengers, eighty-three 83-year-old Erwin Breithaupt, remembers well the last time he stepped aboard one. It was on a mission over Lintz, Austria, in 1945, his 51st mission of the war. And it was the day that an airborne German fighter plane shot off his left arm. Breithaupt walks with a cane these days and gets a little lost in conversation, repeating several times: "The last time I was in one of these, the Army [Air Corps] was paying me!" But when the one-hour flight is over, he seems genuinely moved by the experience.

"To tell you the truth, it is all a whole lot bigger than I remembered it," he says, gazing up at the starboard wing.

Remembering the past, or at least aspects of the past, is what the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War Two Weekend in Reading, Pennsylvania is all about. In addition to flights in The Yankee Lady, the more than 30,000 visitors can get a close look at a slew of planes, vehicles, and other artifacts from the 1940s. And there are veterans who make the trip as well, some as guests and some as celebrities. They are artifacts themselves--one of the real-life Army Rangers whose exploits were chronicled in the HBO series Band of Brothers; a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, a squadron of black fighter pilots; some local Pennsylvania vets. And there's a model French village where historical actors fight skirmishes clad in period costume and firing off blank bullets.

Despite the historical value, there is something slightly unseemly about celebrating a conflict that left some 50 million people dead and left most of Europe, the Soviet Union, and large portions of Asia in ruin. While the restored aircraft, period costumes, and the performances by Abbot and Costello look-alikes are fond nods to days gone by, vendors selling all manner of military bric-a-brac -- from plastic M16 rifles to action figures -- leave the visitor with the feeling that consumerism has trumped history.

And then there are the vets. Sitting behind plastic tables more reminiscent of a flea market, they sign books and photographs for prices determined by their war records. Ted "Dutch" Van Kirk, the navigator on the Enola Gay, signs autographs and sells model airplanes signed by three of the surviving crew for $295. A signed photo runs $35.

Gen. Paul Tibbits, who piloted the mission over Hiroshima, declines more invitations to these events than he accepts. A busted back and failing ears have made it more difficult. He doesn't seem to mind the attention, though he never imagined 60 years ago that he'd end up as a celebrity signing 8x11 glossies for sixty bucks.

But the fact that he has told the story of his famous (or infamous) mission a thousand times hasn't lessened its poignancy or made the old flyer anymore more cavalier about telling it. (His description of looking down on a city that looked like a bubbling pit of boiling tar is haunting.) Sitting for an interview, when his manager leans down to half-shout into his ear to hurry his story along, a young Tibbits emerges from behind the veil of age. "I don't like to do things half-assed," he snaps, at his friend.

Despite the mild commercialism and hokiness that is probably both inevitable at such an event, there is an unavoidable respect for the war and the generation who fought it. Marvin Perrett, who drove landing craft on to the beaches at D-Day, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, says that today's history classes are woefully inadequate. Tears run down his wrinkled eighty 80-year-old cheeks when asked if the event in any way trivializes the suffering that he witnessed firsthand. "When I see these re-enactors, I thrill at their presence," he says in a soft New Orleans drawl. "Someone has to carry on this history. When we are gone, it's just back to the books."