A short one, where NOT to land a flying fortress

[Redglyph]

You'll have to excuse the craziness of it all. If you're sensitive to nonsense or early signs of madness, you should simply not read what follows

I decided the other day, with the encouragement of my crew, to make a trip to Narvik and claim the B-17 that was captured in the vicinity in 1941, and perhaps avenge the two others that were shot down during that raid. The trip to there was uneventful and a bit long, the radio caught a few programs on the RF for our distraction, but there was a lot of static so they usually didn't last.

Since it's now December, there isn't much sunlight this far North, so when we arrived in the middle of the afternoon we were welcome by a nicely lit landscape, making it quite simple to spot the runway.



We were hoping for enough wind to compensate the short runway but it was a shy 8-10 knots, and to add insult to injury it came from the North. So we initiated the turn to runway 01, flying as low as possible above the village.





Thankfully we were quite light, we dropped our bomb load on the nearby Evenes, just to make sure they wouldn't get any idea of building an airport there, and the fuel tanks were far from full. Still, the view of this runway was not reassuring... I was really having second thoughts.



I imagine the guy in the tower must have wondered what this was all about.




Oh, it was rough. Had a few stares from the flight engineer and comments from the copilot, but we could stop by the skin of our teeth, just short of the edge of the runway.







The captured B-17 and its crew were nowhere to be found, pity, but to be honest none of us spoke Norwegian so that didn't help. We tasted a few local beers and ate a 1000 £ hamburger at the nearest pub, then got back to Sally.

Taking off was much easier than landing!



Bye, Narvik...



All right, let's head back home!



That was fun But I must admit I didn't make it on the first take, I haven't mastered the landings yet and it probably has shortened the life of those brakes. The runway at ENNK is 906 m, so normally not where you'd want to land a B-17. But the scenery is beautiful, and I just love this bird, so it was just too tempting and I thought I'd share the screenies to tempt some of you as well.

More practice definitely needed. Actually, the copilot even encouraged me to make some touch-and-go practice you've got to enjoy those little comments they do, nice touch.


PS: yes, the part about the 3 lost aircraft is authentic, though I don't think the one that was captured landed at Framnes, even without much training on the B-17 back then, they had more sense than that

[bmbrzmn101]

It's always fun to add some history to our flights! And the crew can be demanding sometimes on how they want you to land in just the right way! Sheesh....

Cheers, Chris

[Piper_EEWL]

Cool little story and some nice screenshots. I love that B-17 too.

Thanks for sharing

[Lewis - A2A]

Nice shots and looks like a fun landing, how much fuel did you take off with?

thanks,
Lewis

[Killratio]

Which reminds me... Norforce, has your Crew Chief finished pulling that NDB out of my undercarriage yet?

[Redglyph]

Nice shots and looks like a fun landing, how much fuel did you take off with?

Thanks! I took the "light" configuration with the main tanks but not the Tokyo, so about 10000 lbs at take-off, of which I must have burnt a bit before landing with a couple of touch-downs.

Very fun, but not recommended if you want your landing gear and brakes to last forever

[alan CXA651]

Hi.
Where did you takeoff from as this looks like a challege thats to good to miss.
regards alan.

[Redglyph]

Hi.
Where did you takeoff from as this looks like a challege thats to good to miss.
regards alan.

I just did a circuit, taking off from and landing to Narvik (ENNK), using Orbx scenery There are many airports nearby, the closest being Evenes (ENEV).

[alan CXA651]

Hi.
I thought you might have recreated one of the b17 flights from uk to narvik , as there is so many ww2 usaaf b17 bases during that time ,a lot of them in and around norfolk , based on the story you told about the 3 b17s .
i did not think you just did a circuit , and was going to have a go myself as it looked like a challenge that i could not resist .
thanks for the info though .
regards alan.

[alan CXA651]

hi.
i tried a circuit from narvik yesterday , min fuel and bombs , taxiied from stand to runway , ASN was giveing a slight wind of 111 deg aircraft did not want to take off and had to force her off as i was running out of runway , this ment i had to imediately push nose slightly down just after lift off to prevent stall, she struggled into the air managed to turn around without hitting any mountains dropped the bombs over the water , and tried to land back at narvik , came in over the mountain for the runway i had taken off from , came in at 100knts touched down and was complimented by the copilot on the landing , but aircraft would not slow down , thats when i saw the wind sock , it was now a crosswind , ran out of runway . must try harder as they say.
ASN changing the wind direction from take off to landing was only minutes , if i had a headwind i might have stood a chance of stopping , not a chance with the crosswind.
regards alan.

[Redglyph]

A cross wind must be even more challenging, for sure!

[bladerunner900]

Hello mate. Nice landing and also, some historic background is always interesting I find.

If your into totally mad challenges, you should try landing at St Barts (TFFJ), about 650 meters I think. Challenging for medium aircraft, but I gave it a go in the B-17 a while back. Although it didn't end very well. I burst a tyre and careened off the runway. I stopped on the grass somewhere so that was good at least. The crew showed their appreciation by screaming like a bunch of girls, no offence.

This is coming in from the opposite direction from what I tried in the B-17. There's a nice hill you have to get over coming in the other way.
Scenery is Fly Tampa Maarten.



Cheers.
Steve.

[Redglyph]

Sounds interesting!
Thanks for the info, I'll check it out for sure!


About mad places, I recently tried Lukla in Nepal (VNLK), supposedly one of the deadliest place to land and take off. I saw it with an old Aerosoft scenery and it looked interesting. So I tried, but without the add-on scenery.

You can directly see there's a problem with the standard scenery though. At least that's what I got with FTX Global and Vector.

I managed to take off with a Spitfire IIb, I'm not sure how. I didn't try to land... And no, I haven't tried with the B-17



I suppose they don't bring food down there, they just throw it off the edge

[bladerunner900]

Ah yes. I have that AS scenery somewhere. Haven't installed it yet with P3D v3.3 so not sure if it will work. I loaded the default VNLK airport and mine looks different to yours. More like it's carved out of the side of the mountain. Although it could be a combination of Global Open, Global Vector and FSXGX 2010 that I use.



Think I'll try installing AS Lukla again and see how it goes.

Cheers.
Steve.

[Redglyph]

Wow, that's quite different! At least it seems possible to land... somehow... with great care

I should check again, I regularly do the Global Vector elevation correction in the settings, but AFAIK it's for add-ons. Maybe doing it again will improve things in case the elevations were changed in the FTX Global recently.