Blast from the Past

When we got to the airport we saw this beauty sitting across the ramp from our plane. She's a Douglas B-17 named "Sentimental Journey", and is part of the Commerative Air Force. She has led a full and very interesting life, which can be read in full here. Because she was built too late to see service in Europe she was transferred to the Pacific theatre for last few years of the war. She flew mapping duties throughout the Pacific, was an air-sea rescue aircraft, a mothership for nuclear weapons testing drones during the 1950's, and for over 18 years served in a different form of warfare. Flying thousands of sorties throughout the United States as a firefighting aircraft, she outperformed her designed useful life by several orders of magnitude. She was transferred to the Arizona wing of the Commerative Air Force and tours the country. Her schedule can be found here: Sentimental Journey
I got a quick snapshot of her doing a low pass as she was leaving the field.

Sentimental Journey she is indeed.