World War II Bomber Gas Station
Milwaukie, Oregon
Gas up under the wings of Victory! Bomber Gas has been a landmark in the Portland area since 1947, when it arrived and became the region's most unusual filling station. It stopped operating as a gas station in 1991, and has since been associated with the adjacent restaurant, where visitors could grab a bite and a souvenir Bomber place mat.
A serious restoration effort on the B-17G, aka "Lady Lacey" (after Art Lacey's British wife), has been underway at times. In 2012, the nose and cockpit had been removed.
Tipster Blair Shorney sent us this account of how the plane ended up in Milwaukie:
Shortly after WWII a guy named Art Lacey wentto Kansas to buy a surplus B-17. His idea was to fly it back to Oregon,jack it up in the air and make a gas station out of it. He paid $15,000for it. He asked which one was his and they said take whichever you wantbecause there were miles of them. He didn't know how to fly a 4 engineairplane so he read the manual while he taxied around by himself. Theysaid he couldn't take off alone so he put a mannequin in the co-pilot'sseat and off he went.
He flew around a bit to get the feel of it and when he went to land herealized he needed a co-pilot to lower the landing gear. He crashed andtotaled his plane and another on the ground. They wrote them both off as"wind damaged" and told him to pick out another. He talked a friend intobeing his co-pilot and off they went.
They flew to Palm Springs where Lacey wrote a hot check for gas thenthey headed for Oregon. They hit a snow storm and couldn't find their wayso they went down below 1,000 feet and followed the railroad tracks. Hispartner sat in the nose section and would yell, "TUNNEL" when he saw oneand Lacey would climb over the mountain.
They landed safely, he made good the hot check he wrote, and theystarted getting permits to move a B-17 on the state highway. The highwaydepartment repeatedly denied his permit and fought him tooth and nail fora long time so late one Saturday night he just moved it himself. He got a$10 ticket from the police for having too wide a load.
