For Allen Sanderson, it was just another mission.

He’d spent months flying over North Africa and the entire Mediterranean area, so he wasn’t surprised on June 6, 1944, when he was asked to jump in his P-47 and catch the Germans as they retreated from the beaches of Normandy.

“It was a day that we really didn’t know what we were doing when we started out, because there was no announcement that this was D-Day,” he said. “All in all, our group probably flew 50 missions in there. It was just another mission until we had found out what we’d done.”

Sanderson flew two combat missions that day – part of the 118 he completed between November 1943 and December 1944.

And on Monday, 75 years after he made it home from that bloody war, he climbed back into a warplane.

The 96-year-old Evansville man was part of a small contingent that soared over the city in one of few remaining B-17 Flying Fortresses: the famed bombers that dropped tons of ammunition on Europe and the Pacific and helped the Allies win World War II.

The historic plane – owned by the Commemorative Air Force – will spend the week parked at the Evansville Wartime Museum, playing a central role in a four-day event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Monday kicked off the festivities, and from Tuesday to Thursday the plane – only one of nine B-17s still flying – will park at the museum, giving the public a chance to tour it and even, for $475, take flight.

On-board tours run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and cost $10 for adults and $5 for kids 12 and younger. Flights run at 5:30 each evening, carrying eight people at a time. Admission to the museum is separate.

Jeffrey Deig, a Wartime Museum board member, said he’s been on the phone three times a day for the past two months to make this happen.

The plane

The plane, named Texas Raiders, is a fully restored beauty. But it never flew in combat.

According to Kevin Michels, a member of the flight crew, there are only 48 B-17s left in the world. Five of those flew in combat, and they’ve been dutifully shipped to museums for preservation.

His plane came off the line on July 12, 1945 – a month after V-E Day, and less than two months before fighting ended in the Pacific.

So as far as the military was concerned, the plane was worthless. It was even headed for the scrap yard until the Navy intervened and bought it for use in AWACS – the airborne early warning and control system.

Now it travels the country as a mobile museum. Flying in it, Michels said, you get a tiny inkling of what it was like to soar through the ravaged skies of the European theater – with one gigantic exception.

“Nobody is shooting at us,” he said.

The flight

On Monday, a small group of media joined Sanderson on board. Despite all his experience in a P-47, it was his first time aboard a B-17.

The inside of the plane is small and cramped, still crammed with the giant 50-caliber bullets that sprayed from machine guns that jut from the plane’s belly like black horns.

The smell of gas and oil worms into your nostrils. It’s completely different from a commercial flight. Those 737s feel like a giant hospital waiting room in the sky. The B-17, though, is a machine.

The four engines roar like a chorus of ticked-off lions. But when the plane rose above Evansville it settled into an easy flight, calm enough to stand up and look out the glass-less windows.

Sanderson stood to enjoy the spectacular view. At 96, he’s fitter than most people 30 years his junior. Michels offered to help him several times, but he didn’t need it.

Compared to the 118 missions he flew during the war, this flight was easy. Once, an enemy gunner knocked a huge hole in the side of his plane right near the ammo box, causing fire to bloom around the artillery shells. But luckily the fire went out.

And when the B-17 returned to Tri-State Aero on Monday, the landing was much easier than one Sanderson pulled off during the war.

His plane was hit during a mission, and all the instruments went out. Suddenly the plane wouldn’t fly straight or turn right or do much of anything. All it would do, he said, was execute 360-degree turns to the left.

So that’s how he flew it home – going slower and circling wider until he connected the dizzy aircraft with the runway.

Was that nerve-wracking?

“At the time, it probably was,” the 96-year-old said with a smile. “But you know, when you’re young, you don’t think about it that way.”