After Saturday’s blog post, you probably thought we were going to drive over to Louisville to see the hot rod cars.

Well, here’s what we did instead.

This weekend, three World War II-era planes (two bombers and a fighter) owned by the Collings Foundation flew into our local airport to spend about three days. For a small fee, anyone who wanted to could walk around, look at the fighter plane, and actually crawl around inside the bombers. Needless to say, we wanted to. Crawl, however, was indeed the operative word here, as the entrances, exits, and interior spaces were all really, really tight.

.

people waiting to climb inside the B17; climbing the ladder looks easy enough, but once inside the exterior door, you had to get on hands and knees to crawl though an opening into the main compartment

.

those of us in line, about to climb into the B17, reflected in the propeller's nose

.

a view of the ball turret from inside the B17 ...

.

... and the same one from outside; it's pretty easy to see the inspiration for a few Star Wars weapons, no?

.

to get into the B24, you had to crawl through a door that's *underneath* the tail; here are a couple of children by the entrance ladder for scale

.

and, for a better idea of how low to the ground this door is, here's A.J. about to climb in

.

one view of the ball turret in the B24

.

... and the view of the other side of the same ball turret

.

that little strip that's about two feet wide (that's two human feet, not 24 inches) is the "walkway" through the bomb bay; here the doors are open

.

another view of the bomb bay in the B24; here I was actually standing on the ground in the open bay, underneath the "bomb"

.

and, finally, the beautiful "Betty Jane," a P51 fighter plane