A legendary bomber aircraft of World War II will be available for tours and rides in Trenton beginning Monday.
A gleaming Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress called “Sentimental Journey” will be at Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport until Aug. 20, said pilot Jim Dennison, a member of the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum, which maintains it.
It costs $425 to ride in the tail section, $850 to sit in the nose and $10 to tour the plane. The money pays the plane’s fuel and maintenance and gives visitors a chance to interact one of only eight flying B-17s left in the world.
“It’s a big beautiful shiny bird,” Dennison said Friday. “When you fly in it, smell the fuel and feel the vibration of it, it’s amazing.”
The product of a flawed theory — the idea that bombers alone could end World War II — these flying machines have been lionized and condemned. Sentimental Journey, one of the last B-17s built, flew reconnaissance missions in the Pacific theater at the end of the war, Dennison said.
Dennison’s connections to the B-17 and Maine are personal. His father, the late Wayne Dennison, was a ball-turret gunner who flew 35 B-17 missions in Europe and Dennison, 63, has homes in Bar Harbor and Arizona.
“It is a relic, a piece of history, and there’s not a lot of those left today that still work — or in this case, fly,” Dennison said. “It’s probably good for kids to learn about what this airplane did.”