TRENTON – The World War II bomber parked Friday afternoon on the tarmac of Bar Harbor Airport looked newer than its years, with shiny metal wings and a sassy picture of Betty Grable painted on its side.

Wayne Dennison of Ellsworth, another veteran of the war, looked younger than his years as he examined the restored plane with keen interest.

Dennison, 81, recalled the 35 trips he flew in another B-17 in another era. His plane was called “Sheriff’s Posse,” and the octogenarian smiled as he recalled its sharply different decorations.

“We had a picture of an old sheriff, looked like a dog, actually,” Dennison said. “And a picture of Hitler. Next to his face was written ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.'”

Dennison, nicknamed “Lucky,” flew on bombing missions across Europe as a ball turret gunner. The East Machias native bent his 6-foot frame into a small, round ball on the bottom of the plane and shot at enemy aircraft with a machine gun.

“He’s a survivor,” said his wife of 59 years, Nonie Dennison. “Not many of them made that many missions without getting shot down.”

His squadron was the 91st Bomb Group, based out of Bassingbourne, England. A life spent squashed into the ball turret couldn’t have been easy, but Dennison glosses over the discomforts of sitting in the cramped, freezing space for as many as 11 hours searching for German planes.

“It was noisy,” he said. “I wore an electric-heated suit … After you’d been in there nine hours, it got kind of cold.”

The jauntily dressed octogenarian pulled a 2-inch-long piece of jagged steel out of his pocket.

“That’s flak,” he said, referring to the anti-aircraft fire that was a constant danger to the fighter planes. “That came into my turret.”

Dennison, who joined up when he was 18, flew missions from March 22 to June 18, 1944.

“It was at the height of the war when it was just so terrible,” his wife said. “He lost an awful lot of planes out of his squadron.”

His last flight on a B-17 was to Hamburg, Germany.

“It was rough,” he said. “They bombed oil storage tanks on the river. A lot of smoke came up that day.”

It was his last flight, that is, until 2004, when the restored B-17 Flying Fortress “Sentimental Journey” made its first trip to Maine.

“I enjoy it,” he said of the chance to see the plane again. “I like seeing this old critter.”

The restored aircraft will be at the airport for one week, allowing airplane history buffs to tour and even take a trip on the shiny bomber.

“This is the most authentic B-17 left flying in the whole world,” Jim Dennison, Wayne Dennison’s son, said on the tarmac.

Jim Dennison is a member of the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force, a nonprofit group that flies the plane around the country.

This particular B-17 came out of the factory in November 1944 and never saw combat. The plane was used for years to fight forest fires, then the group purchased it in 1978 and carefully restored it to near-mint condition.

“It’s a tribute to the veterans of World War II and it’s a thrill to all of us to keep it flying,” Jim Dennison said. “It’s a flying museum.”

After a short but exhilarating flight, during which the bomber swooped over Mount Desert Island, Wayne Dennison bounded out of the plane like a much younger man.

“I always like flying,” he said with a grin.

“Sentimental Journey” will be on display until Thursday, Aug. 18, at Bar Harbor Aviation in Trenton. The public is invited to tour the plane or to take 45-minute rides on it, for a tax-deductible fee. Call 288-8918 for information or reservations.