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WATERLOO - Norm Mutchler hadn't taken a plane ride like this for some time - and this time, only photographers were shooting at him.

Mutchler, of Waverly, and a handful of other U.S. Army Air Force veterans of World War II took a ride in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber as it arrived for a two-day stop at the Waterloo Regional Airport Monday.

The bomber, called the Aluminum Overcast, is operated by the Experimental Aircraft Association of Oshkosh, Wis. It will be at the airport today and Wednesday for paid flights and public tours. It is one of about only a dozen B-17s still operating.

It was Mutchler's first trip in a B-17 since World War II. He served as a co-pilot in Europe during the war.

"You mind if I look at the (instrument) panel?" Mutchler asked the pilots. "It's been 62 years since I was in here. Brings back a lot of memories."

"This is my spot. I like it here," Mutchler said as he stood behind the co-pilot and looked out the window.

The flight brought back memories for several World War II Air Force veterans present - like Cleon Wood of Cedar Falls, who flew on 31 combat missions as a B-17 top turret gunner and flight engineer in Europe; and Chuck Backerman, who flew 43 combat and reconnaissance missions in the Pacific in a B-17, as a tail gunner and "ball" gunner, operating a gun turret protruding from the plane's belly.

For the untrained, however, it was a unique experience. An ocean of sound engulfed the ears as the plane's four engines revved up before takeoff. Yet, for all the plane's power, those unfamiliar with the B-17 could only wonder how crews functioned and fought in the planes - the cramped gun turrets; the now-seemingly primitive seats and work tables for the crews; and the small crawl space leading from the cockpit to the bombardier's position - a seat half the size or less of a modern office chair.

"How'd this get so narrow?" Mutchler joked as he edged his way down a narrow walkway over the plane's bomb bay doors between the fuselage and the cockpit.

The bombardier's position was perhaps the most breathtaking. Located at the very front of the plane, in the aircraft's all-glass nose, it gave an inexperienced occupant the sensation of standing at the edge of a high diving board.

The fixtures within the bombardier's position were reminders of the B-17's grim purpose and the dangers its crews faced. Two machine guns were mounted in the plane's nose on either side of the seat, fed by twin bandoleers of bullets threaded into the weapons from ammo boxes. The bomb sight and bomb release button sat at the center of the nose, just forward from the bombardier's chair.

Racks of inactive bombs lined either side of the walkway over the closed bomb bay doors.

Mutchler, who arrived in Europe late in the war, flew three combat missions before the war ended. One was a nine- to 10-hour flight that involved dropping dangerous fragmentation bomb bundles on a rail installation near the German-Austrian border. Flying through bad weather, the planes struggled to maintain formation close enough to be effective on the target, yet spaced apart enough to avoid being hit by the ordnance bundles, which sometimes broke up as they were dropped.

"I talk to some of these guys that flew 30 missions, or 25, and got over earlier in the war. We were the lucky ones, really. A lot of the guys that went over didn't come back," Mutchler said, including a friend from Marshalltown.

Backerman was flying a B-17 weather reconnaissance mission over Japan the day the U.S. had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That and a similar bombing of Nagasaki days later led to Japan's surrender and the war's end. Among his original crew mates was Darrell Royal, who went on to become head football coach at the University of Texas.

Joe Pfiffner of Waterloo, who flew 28 combat missions in a B-24 Liberator bomber during World War II, recalled one fateful flight he missed. The crew he had trained with was assigned to transport a supply of gasoline.

"They were hauling gas over to France, and they could only take one gunner along. So all the gunners, we drew (playing) cards to see who would go. I got a king and another fella got a king. So we all drew over again, and I got an eight of hearts and this other kid got a king," and flew the mission.

"The plane crashed on takeoff," Pfiffner said. "Six of my original crew were killed. I still got the card in my pocket yet. I carry it in my billfold all the time."

Mutchler's most memorable mission came on June 2, 1945, less than a month after the war ended in Europe, when his ship flew from Sudbury, England, into Austria. It underscored the brutality of the Nazi regime, and the purpose of the Allies' cause.

"We picked up 27, 28 French slave laborers," he said, survivors of Nazi work camps, returning them to French soil north of Paris. "And I'll tell you, that was an experience. They were emaciated. I don't think a single one of them weighed more than 120-130 pounds. They were underfed, undernourished, full of lice. I can't imagine one race of people treating another race of people that way. Really pathetic." He recalled how grateful they were to return to French soil.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or pat.kinney@wcfcourier.com.