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Since 1986, Nine-O-Nine has been owned by the Collings Foundation, who operate her as a living history exhibit. Without a combat record of its own, this bomber was painted to look like the real Nine-O-Nine in honor of its incredible service record of never losing a crewman. It’s actually not the real Nine-O-Nine either, the original was scrapped after it completed eighteen bombing runs over Berlin.
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This particular aircraft was built too late to see any combat, although in the 1950s she was fitted with various instruments and exposed to three separate nuclear blasts for research purposes. One of them is Nine-O-Nine, a B-17G built in April 7, 1945.
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Today there are fewer than 50 intact Boeing B-17s left in the world, and of those, only 11 remain airworthy. Thanks to the plane’s renowned survivability in battle, approximately 60% of them made it through the war and returned home to the United States, only to be rounded up in so-called “boneyards” where they were ultimately cut up and sold as scrap. Made infamous by the daring daylight strategic bombing runs they carried out over Germany, more than 12,000 of these four-engined bombers were produced between 19. The Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” is arguably the most recognizable aircraft of the Second World War.