The Red Key Tavern, 5170 N. College Avenue [PP23 on map], has a long history of military planes hanging from the ceiling. I recently received a call from Bill Helbing saying he was scheduled to hang another plane at the Red Key.

When I arrived to take pictures, I found Terry Carnes there. I have known her for many years. It turned out that Terry had called Bill to restore the model plane and add it to the Red Key collection!

Terry's father Fred Carnes, a WWII pilot, was shot down in Germany while flying a B-17 aircraft. It is interesting to note that Russ Settle, long-time owner of the Red Key Tavern, was also shot down in a B-17 during that war.

Here is a description of Fred's experience as told by his daughter Terry, "My father, U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Fred Carnes, was born in 1919 in Muncie and grew up in Richmond, where he graduated from St. Andrew's High and began working at International Harvester. His B-17 pilot experience is similar to former Red Key owner Russ Settle's in that they both were shot down on their second missions and became POWs. On Dec. 20, 1943, my dad and crew were returning to base at Grafton Underwood, England, from bombing industrial targets in Bremen, Germany, when they encountered heavy flak. He said three of the four engines were gone. He set the B-17 down in shallow waters of the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands, and he and his crew waded to one of the Frisian Islands where they buried the radio operator who had been killed by antiaircraft fire. German soldiers waded out to meet them with guns, and then they were sent by vehicle and train to POW camps. My father spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft 1. He and his surviving eight crewmen all survived the war and returned to the States.

"My father returned to Harvester in Richmond after the war, following his marriage to my mother, Alice Tighe Carnes, of New Albany. Their wedding took place July 9, 1945, a few weeks after VE Day. IH transferred him from Richmond to Memphis and then to the home office in Chicago, where he worked for decades. He retired and then moved back to Indiana, settling in New Albany. He died in 1987, two years after my mother.

"He really did tell me that flying the B-17 was like driving a car! (which I mention in the Star story.) He didn't dwell on the war when we were growing up, though my brother and I always knew the basics. I think he wanted to spare us children the extreme aspects of his war experience (if you saw "Masters of the Air," the recent Spielberg show, you know what I mean). But we never had turnips, rutabagas, or dark rye bread on our table growing up -- because toward the end of the war that was all the POWs got when food was running low and the German guards took the GIs' Red Cross packages."

After a trip in 2003 Terry's family took to see a real B-17 aircraft, her son Luke Sowka built a model of the plane. Now, Terry has decided to add that model to the planes at the Red Key. Bill Helbing, who has been tending to the model planes here for about 30 years, restored the model and arranged with Leslie Settle for it to be added to the ceiling at the neighborhood bar.