WWII fighter plane on flatbeds?

[markpierce]

Bombers like B-17s had sufficient range to make it via Iceland and Greenland all the way across and so did fighter planes like the P-38 and P-51.

As a copilot, my father flew his B-17 from Texas to England in 1944. The plane never made it back to the states, however. It was shot down over Germany on his 14th mission. Fortunately, the only abuse as a POW was a kick in the pants by a policeman immediately after his capture. After his release in 1945, my father did have a good time in Paris where the military had given him several hundred dollars twice to “live it up.” … Sixty-three years later, looking at the glass-engraved monument at the Duxford Imperial War Museum outside of London with engraved images of individual lost American aircraft of WWII in the European theatre, I had a lump in my throat. The vast majority were the heavy bombers, particularly B-17s.

Mark

[markpierce]

What might be more interesting is to model a “bomb train”. I know rail roads delivered explosives to bomb factories, I imagine that shipping finished bombs by rail could be done. And a create a “booming” more interest.

As at Roseville, CA during the Vietnam War? They were digging out the unexploded bombs from the ground even decades later.

Mark

[JimValle]

During WWII oil tankers on the North Atlantic run were fitted with “spar decks”, lightly constructed cargo decks that covered the tank deck to accomodate crated fighter planes or planes stripped of their wings which accompanied them in crates. It’s probably a safe bet that these crated or partially crated planes arrived dockside on flatcars. I’ve seen photographs of the airplanes loaded on tankers but can’t recall seeing a picture of an aircraft on a flatcar. Can anybody help out here?