Bravo 369 team traced WWII air route from Great Falls
After the Bravo 369 team left Great Falls in July, they ran into weather that forced them to deviate from the Alaska-Canadian Highway in some areas.
It wasn't part of the plan, but stayed true to what the pilots of the 7th Ferrying Group would have experienced, while ferrying planes through Canada to Alaska for the Russians as part of the Lend-Lease program.
"I can really appreciate what these World War II pilots had to do to skirt weather," said Jeff Geer, executive director of the Bravo 369 Flight Foundation.
Geer and Bravo 369 have worked to retrace the Lend-Lease route from Great Falls to Russia in vintage aircraft. Bravo 369 is also creating a documentary about the program.
During the Warbirds over the Falls event in Great Falls in July, more than 6,000 people visited the Great Falls International Airport to see Bravo's vintage T-6 Texans, a vintage P-51, a vintage P-63 Kingcobra out of Idaho, a C-47 flown by a Russian crew, and a C-130 from the 120th Airlift Wing.
The event was designed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Alaska-Siberia air route and the efforts of the 7th Ferrying Group.
"I had the feeling, and several of the team members had the feeling, that Great Falls would be the focal point of the North American leg of the trip and it definitely was," Geer said.
The Lend-Lease program sent nearly 8,000 U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union to help them defeat Nazi Germany and the planes were flown to Great Falls by Women Airforce Service Pilots, WASPs. Once in Great Falls, U.S. military pilots with the 7th Ferrying Group flew them to Alaska to meet Soviet pilots who would ferry the planes to the battlefront.
The T-6, P-63 and C-47 were among the types of planes sent to the Soviets.
During the weekend, unbeknownst to Geer and his team, airshow goers donated about $2,400 to support the documentary project.
They're now in documentary production and the projected release of the 12-part documentary is December 2016.
"I knew it was going to be big, I just didn't realize how big," Geer said. "I think the people in Great Falls are very warm, gracious people."
From Great Falls, the pilots headed north but forecasted thunderstorms and tornadoes kept them out of Calgary.
Bravo 369 team traced WWII air route from Great Falls
In Edmonton, they had a "wonderful gathering" with the counsel general of the Russian embassy in Ottawa at the Edmonton Aviation Museum.
They were also hit with a huge storm in Edmonton and their vintage T-6s had to sit outside overnight.
"It really had us worried about the condition we were going to find out planes in the next morning," Geer said.
At Dawson Creek, British Columbia, local tourism officials started greeting the Bravo team when they arrived and passing the word up to their next stop. The city is also mile zero of the ALCAN Highway.
Ever since the 2013 test flight, Geer said he'd been dreading the runway at Tok, Alaska since it's short, with lots of crosswind and deep ditches on both sides. When they came in for landing, Geer said he could only see about an inch of the runway off the wing on each side in a 15 knot direct crosswind.
"I knew if we had to land at Tok again, it had to be the best landing of my life," he said.
As they were preparing to land, someone pulled in front of them to take off, so they had to circle around again.
Warbirds take to Great Falls skies
"It was the best landing of my life," he said.
In Fairbanks, they did a hand-off ceremony with the Russian pilots of Rusavia who were flying a C-47 at the Lend-Lease memorial there. The Russian pilots competed the recreation of the route to Russia. The Russians donated their C-47 to the Russian defense ministry, which controls military aviation museums in Moscow.
Even though the Bravo team couldn't complete the trip to Russia in their vintage planes, they were invited to attend a major airshow in Moscow in August.
At the close of his opening remarks for the airshow, Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the Bravo 369 team by surprise when he mentioned the project, the cooperation between U.S. and Russian pilots and said it was a wonderful project, Geer said.
"Never would have believed this idea would have blossomed into something that was getting recognition from the president of Russia," Geer said.
Veterans share history of Lend-Lease
The team also had a chance to share updates on the project during a large press conference at the airshow and met with the former head of the Soviet Air Force, who praised the project, Geer said.
Gore Hill ideal site for ferrying WWII aircraft to Russia
The team is hoping to complete the full flight from Great Falls to Russia in about two years, which will be the 75th anniversary of the Alaska to Siberia air route, Geer said. It will take more coordination with the Russians to ensure fuel stops and other logistics through Siberia for the vintage planes.