Idiocy destroys a WW2 B17 Flying Fortress ...

[Roadkingtrax]

do they (or I guess did they) retrofit these planes with black boxes?

Not that I am aware of. I believe the recording devices are a FAR required system. Installation on these experimental aircraft would probably not be specified.

[Art]

These aircraft are all private property. The people who own them rely on volunteer maintenance teams and revenue from taking people up. They are also very, very old, the newest ones are at least 75 years old. Who knows what happened to them in their service life, how many hard landings, what kind of battle damage or other stresses to the airframe that may not be caught by the maintenance staff. I have personal reservations about flying the very limited number of these aircraft at all, flyable doesn't mean you have to take them up; but they aren't mine and I understand the need to have revenue to keep them up so that's that.

I knew a retired anesthesiolgist who was on the ground crew of a B26 Marauder owned by the C.A.F. which crashed into Matagorda Bay in 1995 killing its crew and was damaged beyond repair. If you think B17s are rare there are only a half dozen or so Marauders left in the world and only about half of them are flyable or being put into flying condition. The C.A.F. plane I mentioned was converted after the WWII into a high speed commercial passenger plane and then converted back into its WWII configuration when the C.A.F. bought it.

[Roadkingtrax]

Hitting the ILS towers as has been reported, would be of grave concern. The airframe and the powerplants still go through a stringent maintenance cycle.

No amount of airframe time inspections would help an impact with a deicing tank.