Painted on the side of the Dragon are many names of sponsors and honor crew members. These are groups and individuals that have provided funding over the years to keep these gallant birds flying. 

I took this photo showing the contribution of some of the 456th Bomb Group's members.

Here's a simple cutaway of the B-24 fuselage that I have marked with names of the various areas so you can follow along through the pictures.

This shot will really give you an appreciation for the difficulty of getting from one end of the airplane to another. It was taken on the B-17 but the bomb racks are identical to those on the B-24. Here Zac is standing at the flight deck end of the bomb bay and I am halfway through the bomb bay on my way forward. The diagonal beams supporting the bombs get very narrow at the bottom, and there's a small catwalk where they join. This is what the crew members had to walk on. Remember the bomb bay doors are just below the bombs, are open on the end to the icy cold slipstream, and are also built to allow a dislodged bomb to fall through - which means if you stepped off the catwalk onto the bomb bay door, you would likely fall through too... Now imagine trying to traverse the bomb bay while flying and in full combat gear and woolens with a walkabout oxygen bottle in hand...

This is a view of the cockpit and controls, virtually unchanged from their original incarnation. There have been some modern devices added as a result of safety compliance and FAA regulation, but they are not quite discernable.

This shot is looking aft from the waist gun area. You can see directly into the tail turret and the small steps used to get up to it. The doorway is very small and it takes a contortionist to get into the turret. But the view from here during flight is spectacular - as you will see further on. The yellow items are oxygen bottles, which were stored in many places on the plane. Oxygen was needed by the crew since the cabin was not pressurized - without supplemental oxygen, you would black out and die from asphyxia within minutes at an altitude of 26,000 feet...

This is a view looking down on the top of the belly, or "ball" turret, which is located just aft of the bomb bay before the waist gun area. An airman would climb into this from the top, and it would be sealed up and then lowered out of the belly of the aircraft where he could use his twin 50 caliber guns to protect the plane. If anything went wrong and the turret could not be retracted, there was no way to get the airman out - or for the aircraft to safely land.

For take off and landing during my flight I sat directly in front of the ball turret on a small bulkehead seat, with the rudder control cables scraping my knee and my leg on top of an oxygen bottle. (Later in the day I found I had substantial bruising on my leg.) It was about as uncomfortable as you can imagine, but all I had to do was look down at this turret and think what that must have been like, and I felt markedly better...

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