Many years back I worked on 1820's. Loved those things and they served us very well. I believe the B17's used the same Hamilton Standard variable speed prop that we did. At night sometimes I'd just make up an excuse to go out on the flight line and fire one or two up just hear them run.

Ironically, about 24 years ago, my brother and I got Dad (who'd been a flight engineer on B17's and B29's) up for a ride in the Collings B17. We sat on the floor in the back like they did with most all passengers. I had a video camera along to film the experience.

While taxiing out, I thought I noticed a prop acting up. Looked over at Dad and said " Do you feel a prop oscillating? He immediately came back with "I was going to ask you the same thing". About then they pulled everything back to idle and pulled off the taxi way. They shut off the engines. Sure enough they pulled a work stand over to an inboard engine and were doing something on the prop. I couldn't see much from where we were. Then someone hammered (on the nose cone I think) a bit, they put everything away and re-started the engines. We just looked at each other and shrugged.

The flight was great. I filmed Dad's face as the plane lifted off and the expression he had was beyond words. It still causes me to tear up just remembering. Filmed Dad sitting in his flight engineer seat and got to walk all around the plane during the flight. Great memory.

RIP Dad.