World War II Bomber Gas Station (Gone)
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.
Tipster Blair Shorney sent us this account of how the plane ended up in Milwaukie:
"Shortly after WWII a guy named Art Lacey went to 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 $15,000 for it. He asked which one was his and they said take whichever you want because there were miles of them. He didn't know how to fly a four-engine airplane, so he read the manual while he taxied around by himself. They said he couldn't take off alone so he put a mannequin in the co-pilot's seat and off he went.
"He flew around a bit to get the feel of it and when he went to land he realized he needed a co-pilot to lower the landing gear. He crashed and totaled 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 into being his co-pilot and off they went.
"They flew to Palm Springs where Lacey wrote a hot check for gas, then they headed for Oregon. They hit a snow storm and couldn't find their way, so they went down below 1,000 feet and followed the railroad tracks. His partner sat in the nose section and would yell, 'TUNNEL!' when he saw one and Lacey would climb over the mountain.
"They landed safely, he made good the hot check he wrote, and they started getting permits to move a B-17 on the state highway. The highway department 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."
Update: The B-17G, named "Lady Lacey" (after Art Lacey's British wife), began undergoing a serious restoration effort in 2012, when the nose and cockpit were removed. On August 13, 2014, the rest of the bomber was removed, and the restoration proceeds at the B-17 Alliance Museum in Salem. The Lacey family estimated that the plane could be worth millions if restored to flying condition, which meant bye-bye bomber forever as a gas station awning.