The B-17, Aluminum Overcast is in Denver this week for a WWII commemoration and is on display at APA, Arapahoe County Airport, in Centennial, CO. Lat night, a severe thunderstorm swept into the area with 2" hail and damaging winds tearing up roofs, denting automobiles, and sadly, severely damaging the B-17. From the pictures on KUSA's website it doesn't look good. The upper control surfaces are riddled with tears and dents from the hail.

Link and pictures: http://www.9news.com/news/photo-gallery.aspx?storyid=271355

http://www.9news.com/images/640/360/...l/photogallery/271355/photo(1).JPG

[Edited 2012-06-07 16:12:55]

I believe that is mostly fabric, so part removal, stripping and repairing although tedious and time consuming will not affect the life of the aircraft

My Father flew those B-17's in WWII and had shown us kids picture of B-17's with far more damage that came from the German 109's and flack and still managed to fly hundreds of mile back to their base. The B-17 is one very tough bird and could be repair within a short amount of time. Sometimes as little as 24 hours if need be. As Kanban stated most of the skin is a fabric like material on the wing and is an easy to fix, but will take some time to do because it most likely not going to be on sight unless the people that flew the B-17 in have it with them and have the know how to make the repairs.

Fabric shouldn't be hard to find. It will take a day or two to get everything stiched and the silvercoat of dope on it. Sheetmetal will take longer, and there may be some rib repairs needed if one of them them took a direct hit from a hailstone

As far as hail, this airplane stood up to 88mm flak guns, a bit of hail is nothing.

Quoting L-188 (Reply 3): As far as hail, this airplane stood up to 88mm flak guns, a bit of hail is nothing.

Yeah, the damage from the hail is nothing compared to the damage to B-17s took in the pictures at this website.

http://www.daveswarbirds.com/b-17/contents.htm

And all those damaged B-17s were amazingly able to return to base.

Quoting L-188 (Reply 3): Fabric shouldn't be hard to find. It will take a day or two to get everything stiched and the silvercoat of dope on it.

Getting the fabric is the easy part of the job. It will actually take a lot longer to recover the control surfaces. I estimate 10-14 working days to remove, strip, prep, recover, final finish and install the ailerons and elevators and that's with a good fabric working crew in a good facility.

Cheers,

John

Quoting boeingfixer (Reply 5): Getting the fabric is the easy part of the job. It will actually take a lot longer to recover the control surfaces. I estimate 10-14 working days to remove, strip, prep, recover, final finish and install the ailerons and elevators and that's with a good fabric working crew in a good facility.

EAA says the aircraft will be flying passenger rides next weekend in Denver for those who had purchased them already. There are a lot of people who would gladly donate time to work on such an aircraft.

-DiamondFlyer

Quoting boeingfixer (Reply 5): . It will actually take a lot longer to recover the control surfaces. I estimate 10-14 working days to remove, strip, prep, recover, final finish and install the ailerons and elevators and that's with a good fabric working crew in a good facility.

That probably isn't too far off.

Again you could probably skimp a bit on the number of silver coats, plus I think they should be able to get multiple teams to work on one or two surfaces at a time which will speed things up.