Lane Action Recliners

B-17 flies longtime pilot down memory lane

Even 61 years later, the B-17 was comfortable and familiar for Ruffin Gray of Katy, like an old favorite recliner.

In March, Gray rode in a B-17 flown by a Commemorative Air Force volunteer — but he was in the wrong seat. Gray sat in the bombardier position in the nose of the plane, not the pilot's seat, where he'd spent 500 hours between 1947 and 1950.

"I wanted to fight the pilot to see who got to sit in the left seat and take off and land," said Gray, who received the trip from his five children as a present for his 87th birthday. "Maybe I'm delusional, but I really believe I could still go out and fly that plane with my eyes closed."

Gray joined the Army Air Corps on Nov. 11, 1942, when he was 18.

"There was a war on, and we were afraid it would be over before we got to see any action," he said.

During his first training flight, he was doing S-turns at 1,000 feet, his Piper Cub tilted so his left side faced the ground. As he straightened up, another plane that was attempting to buzz him as part of a prank crashed into him, ripping off his struts and landing gear.

His instructor, Frankie Burger , crash-landed on the runway at Omaha Municipal Airport, where they'd taken off. Gray and Burger survived. The two men in the other plane did not.

Thirty minutes later, Gray was back up in the sky. He went on to log more than 5,600 hours in various planes and jets during a 29-year career in the Air Corps, which later became the Air Force.

During World War II, he flew reconnaissance from Southeast Asia, flying a P-38 ahead of the bombers to scope out targets. He also flew to areas just after the bombings to assess the damage.

That P-38 was his favorite plane. But his son, Jon, recalled that growing up, he heard many of his dad's military stories start with, "Of all the planes I've flown, the most forgiving was the B-17."

"It was B-17 this and B-17 that," Jon Gray said.

"If you are going to fly a big plane, that was the one to fly," Ruffin Gray said. "You could make a lot of mistakes and get away with it in that plane."

His fondness for the plane also springs from the nostalgia he feels for the six months he flew it in Greenland, mapping and scouting ice conditions for the Navy.

"We were completely on our own," he said. "It was a real challenge. It had interesting geography and unlimited visibility.

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