Planes of Fame

Young boys cheered as the mighty bombers lumbered overhead. Old man’s fingers curled around the triggers of machine guns they hadn’t touched in more than 50 years. Even a German- born woman who endured the bombers’ lethal payloads showed up.

Hundreds of people turned out Sunday and Monday to view two restored World War II -a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator -at Van Nuys Airport.

Such aircraft rained destruction on Germany during the war, attaching cities and industrial targets in aerial armadas that overwhelmed German defenses with their sheer numbers.

Some in the crowd paid $300 to fly in the B-24, hailed by its promoters as the only one still flying out of the more than 18,000 manufactured during the war. The Van Nuys event is part of a statewide tour of the aircraft, sponsored by the Collings Foundation of Massachusetts.

Among the spectators was Josephin Sieroty, a native of Germany who lived there when B-17s and B-24s were pulverozomg the country toward the end of the war.

Sieroty recalled that as a girl of 10 she was knocked down the stairs in an air- raid shelter from the shock wave of one- bomb attack.

“I do not want anyone to experience that as a child,” she said.

The B- 24 was named the All American, in memory of a bomber of that name shot down over Yugoslavia in 1944. Earlier that year, the plane’s crew was credited with shooting down 14 enemy fighters during a single mission.