Donald `Mr. B-17' Sachs Was Devoted Fan Of Bomber

New Year's Eve 1944, somewhere over the north coast of Germany, Donald G. Sachs is co-pilot of a shot-up B-17 that is trying to make it back to England.

The plane limps along on only one of its four engines after a bombing run on a Hamburg submarine factory. Three crew members are wounded. All extra weight has been thrown off, including parachutes. There's nothing to do but ditch in the water and face possible death or wade ashore and risk capture.

Mr. Sachs opted for the latter and lived to tell the tale as well as extol the virtues of the B-17 as a Boeing engineer and marketer.

"I was, and still am, damned proud of that crew," he would write later. "I'm not ashamed to say I'm pretty sentimental about that Boeing B-17, too. Yes, we in the crew took care of each other, but that airplane took care of all of us!"

Mr. Sachs might have become an aeronautical engineer even without his wartime experiences. He earned his engineering degree in 1949 at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

But the events of that New Year's Eve, and his subsequent liberation from a German prisoner-of-war camp on Mother's Day 1945, set Mr. Sachs on the path that earned him the nickname "Mr. B-17."

"(He) was well known among World War II veterans and military aircraft circles as the leading expert on the B-17," said his Boeing colleague Fred Kelley.

In 1985, Mr. Sachs organized the 50th-anniversary celebration of the first flight of the B-17. He also led 50th-anniversary events for the B-29, and was a consultant for the 1990 film "Memphis Belle."

Mr. Sachs, who was 75, died of heart failure Saturday (May 9), the same day a Boeing volunteer group delivered a newly restored B-17 to the Museum of Flight in South Seattle.

Born in Bayonne, N.J., he joined the Army after high school, trained as a pilot, and was sent to England, where he flew 20 bombing missions over Germany before being shot down.

After the war, he earned his degree, then got a job working with the wind tunnel at Boeing in Seattle in 1949. He moved into B-52 aerodynamics and coordinated the transfer of the B-52 program to Wichita.

He retired in 1988 but continued as a consultant on Boeing history. He also worked in some fly-fishing.

Mr. Sachs' survivors include his wife of 52 years, Roberta "Bobbe" Sachs of Seattle; his son, Jonathan Sachs of Seattle; and sisters Norma Gardiner of North Port, Fla., and Barbara Stevens of Punta Gorda, Fla.

Services are scheduled for 1 p.m. tomorrow at John Knox Presbyterian Church, 109 S.W. Normandy Road, Normandy Park. Remembrances may go to Providence Seattle Medical Center Foundation, P.O. Box 34008, Seattle, WA 98124; or Hope Heart Institute, 556 18th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122.