Young Jim Rollison admits his favorite place to sit is right up in the nose, where the bombardier worked.

“My favorite thing to do is bomb ? like hangars and big buildings, ’cause it looks like they’re bombing factories just like they did during World War II,” he said.

The youngster from Vacaville, Calif., gets to spend his summers doing what other boys his age would envy ? accompanying his father on board a restored World War II B-24 bomber as it travels the country.

Their journey brought them to the North Coast Monday, when the B-24 and a B-17 Flying Fortress flew up the coastline and touched down at the Astoria Regional Airport. The two historic planes are paying a three-day visit as part of the “Wings of Freedom Tour” organized by the planes’ owner, the Collings Foundation, which owns a fleet of historic aircraft and sponsors air shows and other living history programs around the country.

The planes are open for public viewing until 6:30 p.m. today and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday. Cost is $8 for adults and $4 for children younger than 12.

The crews are also offering 30-minute flights on the bombers for a $425 tax-deductible contribution. Reservations for the flights can be made by calling (800) 568-8924.

Flying with his dad on the tour, Rollison has learned a lot about the planes’ history from the many World War II vets who turn out at each stop and share their wartime memories. So he knows it wasn’t fun and games for the young men who crewed the aircraft years ago.

“It would be a lot scarier having guns being shot at you, either a Japanese Zero, or an ME-109 or a Focke-Wulf, or any German fighter.”

The B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress formed the backbone of the Allied strategic bombing effort against Nazi Germany, flying from bases in England, Italy and other countries against targets in Germany and occupied Europe. The planes also saw service in the Pacific.

More than 30,000 of the aircraft were produced during the war, but virtually all were sold as surplus and eventually scrapped, and today only a handful of Fortresses and one Liberator ? the foundation’s ? are still airworthy.

Built in 1944, the Collings Foundation’s B-24 saw service with the British Royal Air Force in the Pacific, flying bombing and supply missions. It was abandoned after the war in India, where the Indian Air Force restored it and flew it for 20 years. Mothballed again, it was eventually found and purchased by a British plane collector, who later sold it to the Collings Foundation.

The foundation’s B-17 was completed near the end of the war and never saw combat, but in the 1950s it was sold as surplus and converted into an air tanker to fight forest fires. After its retirement, it was bought by the foundation in 1986 and restored to its World War II appearance.

Mike Walsh of Long Beach, Calif., was “in the right place at the right time” when the foundation was seeking a co-pilot for the B-17 eight years ago. He went up in the aircraft for what he thought would be a single flight, and has been with the group ever since as captain of the Fortress and co-pilot of the B-24 and B-25.

“Oh, it’s a great airplane ? it’s a really nice airplane to fly,” he said. “It really doesn’t have any bad vices or characteristics.”

Keeping the bombers and other flying aircraft in the air means constant maintenance ? an average of 20 hours maintenance for every one hour of flying, Walsh said ? and two mechanics accompany the bombers full-time.

Asked how long the old planes may continue flying, Walsh noted that the B-17 was originally intended to be flown for about five years, and that was 17 years ago.

The aircraft have been restored as closely as possible to their wartime appearance, down to the .50-caliber machine guns that fought off enemy fighters and the 500-pound bombs nestled in the bomb-bay.

Evokes wartime feelingAirborne, the B-17 evokes a bit of the feel of those wartime missions ? minus the flak, enemy fighters, lethal cold and other deadly hazards the young crews faced more than six decades ago. The four 1,200-horsepower engines still generate an ear-rattling roar as the plane climbs after take-off, and the wind races past the open panel above the radioman’s quarters. Passengers must squeeze past one another to move through the narrow fuselage and crawl to enter the nose section, careful not to bang their heads on a bulkhead or other protruding piece of metal.

Unlike modern airliners, the bombers’ interiors weren’t pressurized, which required the crew, operating at altitudes well above 20,000 feet, to breath bottled oxygen and wear electrically heated flight suits against temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees.

Special guestsMonday’s flight had two special guests ? veterans of the wartime Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. Jan Goodrum of Lake Oswego and Anna Monkiewicz of The Dalles were among the more than 1,000 women who were recruited and trained to take on such noncombat tasks as test-flying and ferrying planes and even towing targets for practicing anti-aircraft gunners.

“It was fabulous,” Goodrum said of Monday’s flight. “It was just as if I was back in the ’40s.”

Goodrum said she picked the B-24 for Monday’s flight because she flew in one during the war. She still remembers her male colleagues laughing back then as she tried to take the co-pilot’s seat ? her feet couldn’t reach the rudder pedals.

Goodrum said she got support from both her parents to follow her dream of flying. After completing her initial flight training in Texas in 1943, she was assigned to an air base in Arizona, where she test-flew advanced trainer aircraft and transported personnel from base to base. Though she didn’t achieve her goal of flying front-line fighters, she did take the controls of some high-performance aircraft, including the AT-9, at the time one of the fastest aircraft in the world. “That’s why I loved it,” she said.

As one of three women on a 300-man base, she and the other WASPs stood out, she said ? “it was always a surprise to people to see a woman climb out of a plane” ? but the group was proud of its achievements.

“There was not an airplane built during the war that was not flown by a woman,” she said.

Monkiewicz was also thrilled by Monday’s flight.

“It was kind of a flashback,” she said. “The sights, the sounds, the smells of an airplane, it was just great.”

Monkiewicz was 8 years old when Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic in 1927, and from then on she knew she wanted to be a pilot. In the WASPs she got the plum assignment Goodrum missed ? flying Mustangs, Thunderbolts and other high-performance American fighters.

“That was what we all wanted to do,” she said. “They were the cream of the crop.”

Monkiewicz ferried the aircraft from the factories to training facilities and embarkation points for transport overseas. The top-line fighters had speed and power but “you had to be careful what you were doing,” she said. She never had a mishap at the controls of one of the aircraft, although she admitted to flipping over a trainer while landing in a snow storm.

She received little resistance from her male colleagues ? “as soon as they found out we could do the work, they accepted us,” she said ? and she and her fellow WASPs’ exploits opened doors for other would-be women pilots. Monkiewicz herself worked as a flying instructor for several years after the war.

“We have proved we could do it.”