Tours of vintage bombers ready to take flight

By Lethbridge Herald on July 6, 2023.

Air and ground crew connect after the arrival of the B-25 "Maid in the Shade" Thursday evening at the Lethbridge Airport as part of the Flying Legends of Victory tour put on by the Commemorative Air Force Airbase Arizona. Herald photo by Ian Martens

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The Flying Legends of Victory tour continues this weekend with the arrival of the B-25 aircraft “Maid in the Shade” and the opportunity to not only see the inside of the planes but also fly in them. 

The tour is presented by the Commemorative Air Force Airbase Arizona, where the World War II B-17 Sentimental Journey and B-25 aircraft “Maid in the Shade” aircrafts are on display at the Air West Flight Support, Excel Flight Training Inc. building until Sunday. 

“We do two things, one of them is the planes are open for tours. We’ll be doing ground tours so people can come out and for a small fee go inside the plane, you can climb up into the nose and walk through the radio room, and out the back. And then we do fly rides starting Friday to Sunday in the morning and then we do tours in the afternoon on those days,” said Mike Garrett, tour director.  

He said they take the planes on tour over the summer months across North America, but have not been able to be back in Canada since 2019 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. 

“This year we’re in Alberta and British Columbia for five stops, and we picked Lethbridge because we’ve been here before,” said Garrett. 

He said that even though they were in Canada in 2019 last, they have not been in Lethbridge since 2012 when they brought the planes for the airshow. 

Garrett said the planes usually arrive at the same time, but the B-25 unfortunately had to have some unexpected maintenance done when it was in Twin Falls and arrived Thursday, after the B-17 arrived earlier in the week. 

The B-25 aircraft “Maid in the Shade” was built in early 1944 and was named in honour of General Billy Mitchell who is recognized as the father of strategic bombing. It is one of 34 B-25J’s still flying out of the nearly 10,000 produced, and it is most remembered for the Doolittle Raid on Japan, where Jimmy Doolittle led 16 B-25’s across Japan bombing targets. 

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