The Wings of Freedom Tour returned to Santa
Barbara Wednesday afternoon during a 110 city tour with a B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell,
and the newly acquired P-40 Warhawk. Repairs to the canopy of the P-51 Mustang
is delaying its arrival.
In the swelling crowd that
gathered before the planes all touched down was WWII veteran and French Legion of Honor medal
recipient Sir Rutledge Alexander “Putty” Mills. The retired Army Technicians officer had served in
General Patton’s third Army and learned to fly after the war through the GI
bill. He was on the mechanical engineering team for the design of lunar
vehicles. The Santa Ynez resident makes it over the hill for “any kind of event
like this,” Mills said. “I like all of them, any of these World War II planes.
My favorite would be the P51 Mustang”.
WWII Veteran Roger Newton has been to these exhibits “several times but I still come.” Making his way by the B-17 parked on one end of the flight line, he heads to his favorite, the B-25. Newton entered the war in 1944 as an air cadet in the Army Air Corps. “I spent more time in that plane than the others,” Newton remembered. “It was the perfect airplane if you wanted to be a pilot when you couldn’t be a fighter pilot.”
