VALPARAISO | A family dog might have stuck its head up through the open hatch of the vintage B-17 Flying Fortress that flew Monday into Porter County Municipal Airport. (Slideshow)

The buffeting outside the fuselage, with nothing but sun above and Lake Michigan below, was tremendous -- and exhilarating.

Of course, no canine made the Wheeling, Ill.,-to-Valparaiso flight, and its purpose was not merely to offer a joy ride in a classic airplane.

The World War II-era bomber and two other planes are part of the annual Wings of Freedom tour, a living history display designed to honor the veterans who flew the planes and to bring home their sacrifices to later generations.

Perhaps most striking about the flight was the deafening roar of four 1,200-horsepower engines and their propellers just feet from the forward gunner positions. Moving through the plane involved crawling under the pilots' seats to reach the Plexiglas nose cone and walking a narrow catwalk through the bomb bay, with daylight and drafts coming in from the doors below.

"Once you experience it, you get a whole new understanding of what they went through," said passenger Cliff Bryan, a 2008 Valparaiso High School graduate. "You can see all the documentaries in the world," Bryan said, but they can't convey the feel of what the aviators experienced.

"I have a lot more respect for them," he said.

Bryan, his classmate Kate Sanders and 2007 graduate Allison Nix were along for the ride as an added perk of $5,000 leadership scholarships they were awarded by the school's class of 1956 and its member Bob Collings.

Collings heads the Collings Foundation, of Stow, Mass., which owns and operates the Wings of Freedom aircraft.

"World War II was the most critical period in the history of mankind," Collings said before boarding a P-51 Mustang fighter plane for the flight. During its four-year participation in the war, the United States suffered the loss of life equivalent to a Sept. 11 every two weeks, he said.

Collings said he had wondered if today's youth had the moral fiber to do what the WWII generation did. But after work with the scholarship recipients that included a leadership conference in Massachusetts, Collings said he was impressed by the breadth of their achievement in academics, sports, church and community service.

"These kids are terrific," he said.

The tour also includes the sole remaining flying B-24 Liberator, a bomber built in 1944.

The planes will be at the Porter County Airport until Wednesday.