It looks like Fifi, the only known B-29 to maintain airworthy status, will soon have some welcome company in the skies. After several decades, the efforts to bring the B-29 bomber named Doc from its dormancy in the Mojave Desert to back into the skies has taken one giant step in the right direction.
Doc’s restoration effort began in 1987 after Tony Mazzolini rescued the deserted bomber from the desert. “Saving it from that situation in the desert was one thing,” said Mazzolini. “But the dream was always to restore Doc to flying condition and turn it into a flying museum to help keep the memories alive.”
While the initial restoration efforts moved at a snail’s pace due to a lack of funding and adequate workspace, the airplane, which moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 2000, has been enthusiastically worked on for the past two years by volunteers from an organization called Doc’s Friends. The group has estimated that it will cost between $7 million and $9 million to finish Doc’s restoration, get the B-29 flying and find it a permanent home.
Yesterday, on a sunny, spring-like Mid-western day, Doc emerged from its restoration hangar, exactly 70 years after it first left the Boeing hangar in Wichita and went into the hands of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Several retirees who were part of the original B-29 work crew at the Wichita Boeing facility in the 1940s have been an essential part of the restoration effort. Also lending a hand in the tens of thousands of hours of volunteer work that has gone into the project so far, putting together and restoring the components of the airplane and getting the systems to functioning order, were other retirees from Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, veterans, active duty military personnel and other enthusiasts.
Doc’s Friends hope to get the airplane ready for flight sometime this year.
Get exclusive online content like this delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for our free enewsletter.
