Ohio museum volunteers building vintage war plane

0

URBANA, Ohio (AP) — They got one part for the World War
II-era bomber from under an elderly woman’s porch in the next town, and
another was bought from someone who had it hanging in a bar in Colorado.
One chunk was a prop in a 1960s TV show, and the tail section was
salvaged from a wreck deep in the Alaska wilderness.
When dozens
of volunteers are finished piecing them all together at a small Ohio
museum, they’re going to roll out a better-than-new, airworthy version
of one of history’s most famous military airplanes, the B-17, celebrated
in Hollywood adventure movies like "Twelve O’Clock High" and "Memphis
Belle."
A behemoth of a vintage plane that hasn’t been
manufactured new in nearly 70 years is being built one piece at time
here — and when the volunteers can’t buy or barter for parts they need,
they’re making them from scratch based on a collection of 28,000
original Boeing Co. blueprints fetched from microfiche at the
Smithsonian Institution.
"Modesty aside — and I’ve been around
airplanes as much as anybody here — I think we’re building a better
airplane than Boeing did," says volunteer Dick Bidlack, a 79-year-old
Vietnam War fighter pilot who’s been involved with the Champaign
Aviation Museum project since it started in 2005. "But we’re not trying
to build 15 of them a day in a wartime scenario. We’re taking years, so
we have a little more freedom."
Although completion is still years
away, the gleaming shell of the plane stretched out in the hangar these
days is unmistakably a B-17, the rugged 74-foot-long, four-engine
bomber called a "Flying Fortress" because it bristled with .50-caliber
machine guns and could take an awful beating in combat.
Volunteer
Frank Drain designed and painted the authentic-looking nose art, which
features a leggy 1940s pinup girl against an outline of Ohio and the
plane’s Champaign Lady nickname.
"If you had to pick an airplane
that would attract the public attention, the B-17 is the one to pick,"
says the 61-year-old Drain, whose father was a radio operator on a
Flying Fortress during the war. Drain now teaches a class on aviation
occupations at a local vocational school and brings his students to help
out with the project, which can be inspected by visitors any time the
museum is open.
More than 12,700 B-17s were built for the war
effort, most of them pressed into service for daylight precision bombing
raids on industrial targets in occupied Europe from small bases in
England between 1942 and 1945. It was harrowing duty that claimed the
lives of two out of three young men — their average age was 20 — who
served on the storied planes.
After the war, many B-17s were
unceremoniously left to rust in scrap yards or pressed into other
service. Around 40 are left around the world today, with fewer than a
dozen in flying condition.
Coincidentally, history’s most
celebrated B-17 — Memphis Belle — is currently being restored about 40
miles away at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton. The
Belle got the royal treatment from the military brass in 1943 after
becoming one of the first B-17s to survive the required 25 missions at a
time when American bombers were suffering heavy losses. Museum
spokesman Rob Bardua says public display of the plane is still years
away, although behind-the-scenes tours allow visitors to see the
restoration work.
The fact that the Memphis Belle and other B-17s
at the much-larger Air Force museum will never leave the ground again
motivates the Urbana museum crew even more in their quest to make the
Champaign Lady a flying example.
"There was never a decision to
make. When we started the project, it was to make it fly," says Dave
Shiffer, whose ride aboard a touring B-17 with his father and brother in
2005 eventually led to the B-17 project and the founding of the
nonprofit museum.
The initial chunks came from five different
planes. The many other missing parts that can’t be found and restored
have to be fabricated under the watchful eye of Randy Kemp, the
56-year-old project manager who works with a changing cast of around 100
volunteers who have come from as far away as England just to be part of
the effort.
Donations and fundraisers are helping pay for the
project, which Shiffer says will end up costing millions. A benefit
dinner in April at the museum will feature a talk by Amanda Wright Lane —
a great-grandniece of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
___
If You Go:
Champaign
Aviation Museum, Grimes Field Airport, 1652 N. Main St., Urbana, Ohio,
937-652-4710. http://www.champaignaviationmuseum.org. Open
Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
___
Follow Mitch Stacy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mitchstacy
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

No posts to display