When aviation enthusiast Melanie Jordan stands in the middle of her newly decorated basement in her Everett home, she feels the presence of a formation of B-17s on their way home to England after a World War II bombing mission over Europe.
As she looks around the room, that’s exactly what she sees, too, on every wall.
Jordan, a pilot and board member of the Future of Flight Aviation Center &Boeing Tour facility at Paine Field, recently hired a Mukilteo artist to paint the bomber formation showing the planes in varying sizes, some close, some farther away.
Looking over her shoulder, they’re coming toward her. Ahead of her, she sees them flying away. On either side, the planes are flying parallel to her. Seated on the sofa in her new recreation room, she can lean back to see a bomber with a 12-foot wingspan flying overhead. Soon, she’ll finish the walk-in diorama with painted bombers flying across the floor.
“I wanted to depict the formation from the perspective of being in the middle of this huge flight of B-17s, to give a fresh, realistic perspective,” she said. “When friends come by, the room amazes them. It takes them a while to notice all the planes. Then they sit down, look up and they’re surprised again at the one with the 12-foot-wingspan on the ceiling.”
She has discovered that her friends and visitors often have a wartime story to share.
“Someone always has a grandfather or a great-uncle who was in the war, often as fliers, and they like sharing those memories,” she said. “Even workers making repairs on the house recently had family stories. And it’s really fun for me to share this kind of history with younger people who come here.”
Next, to add to the realism of the scene, she plans to include recorded sounds of all those rumbling bomber engines, along with the sounds of the P-51s and Spitfires that are escorting them home and the German Bf 109s that are chasing them. Soon, the images of the fighters will be painted in, replacing the temporary paper planes pasted around the room.
“Won’t that be sweet? Perhaps goofiness for sure, but nevertheless unique,” she said with a laugh and a pleased smile. “It’ll be a great setting for parties and gatherings with friends.”
The B-17 Flying Fortress, built by the thousands by Boeing and other manufacturers during World War II, is definitely a sweet spot for Jordan. Among the many planes she has flown, including a J-3 Cub, a gull-winged Corsair and a Boeing 707 airliner, one of her most memorable flights was piloting a B-17 over Paris (Texas, she adds after a slight pause). She loved that bomber flight, but even that wasn’t her inspiration for painting a formation of bombers in her basement.
“I really was inspired by a B-17 gunner’s diary, photos and medals that he had given to his neighbor in Arlington, Becky Foster of Bruce &Becky’s Interiors, shortly before he died. Reading about his descriptions of all 35 missions, beginning June 6, 1944, really got me thinking about depicting one of his missions on my walls,” she said.
The gunner’s writing style was strictly low-key, she said. His most dramatic and graphic entry being only a brief mention that “we flew into the worst flak I’ve seen yet … some fighters (attacking) … 15 holes in the ship,” Jordan said.
Her research found he had flown with the 305th Bomb Wing, 422nd Squadron out of a base at Chelveston, England. She tried to determine which plane he flew on, but his diary mentioned no aircraft names or numbers for clues. The planes painted into her formation, however, do have the squadron’s proper aircraft markings of the time.
Jordan’s own family history wasn’t focused on aviation as she grew up. Her father, who died in 2001, fought on Iwo Jima and in other Pacific island battles, then started the family’s gravel business in Renton after the war ended. Later, her family owned Marysville Paving, where she worked for many years.
“After he died, my brother and I sold the business, and I moved on to an opportunity to become the founding board president of the group that was creating the Future of Flight center. That work reconnected me with my own aviation experiences of 20 years before. After earning my pilot’s license in 1973, I worked for nonscheduled airlines at Boeing Field and flew whenever I could,” she said.
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