Warbird Information Exchange

Lots of questions to try to answer.

Kermits two "spare" airframes were fairly complete, sans many small parts that were removed by other organizations as use for spares / to complete their displays. and parts were removed by movie companies and souvenir hunters as well. Both of kermits china lake airframes had the vertical stabilizers removed by cutting them off about 2 foot above the bottom. Kermit was primarily after wings, tail cone and what spares he could get in order to restore Myrtle. They were obtained as part of a trade with the Air Force Museum back when they did that. IIRC it involved a Nieuport, Duck and ? in kind Kermit received the EP-35, ? and "all the remaining B-29 Airframes on the North Range at China Lake" I remember there was three airframes available, and had the team from Lowery been 1/2 hour later, they would have missed the deadline, and Kermit would have got T square 54 also. As it was we towed all three several miles through the desert over the one weekend that we had to clear them from the range. We had to dig pits to jack up the aircraft, install wheels that would hold air, and tow them many many miles. It was a long weekend. The two airframes were disassembled and shipped to Carl's place in the desert. (Aero Trader had one advertised for sale on their web site)The third went to Lowery AFB, now at MOF IIRC.

If I remember the story correctly that Kermit told us about the one flight of Myrtle it went something like this:
Kermit wanted to get it to Stockton to primarily get it away from the enviroment at Oakland, with the added benefit of it being "easier to work on" at that airport with more suitable facilities available.
The FAA was going to allow only one attempt at the ferry flight. The wing corrosion was a major concern to them. Myrtle had major intergranular corrosion in the wing skins (among other places).
One engine failed shortly after take-off. Strike 1
Top turret (fwd I think) began to behave like it was going to depart the aircraft.
A second engine was begining to show signs of imminent failure, so the decision was made to RTB (rather quickly). Since the FAA refused to authorize a second attempt, the only way she was leaving was on a truck.

There was evidence of the modifications needed for the D558 on the fuselage. I can't remember exactly where, I will have to go through photo's of the disassembly to refresh my memory. We finished getting her out of Oakland several months before the big earthquake. We traveled the stretch of interstate that collapsed on itself everyday.

We disassembled Myrtle, and shipped the fuselage to Florida (Miami at that time), as Kermit thought it would make a nice display, and he would begin restoration of the fuselage first. The remainder went to storage at Carls.

Hope that helps.

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Wow, thanks for the background on Kermit's B-29's and what came out of China Lake. So it seems Kermit has two B-29's (or at least the remains of 2) in storage Carls in addition to Myrtle, and there's a third B-29 that Aerotrader has for sale (http://www.aerotrader.net/b29.html), is that correct?

From the Aerotrader site:

So which one is the real Myrtle?

The one that Aerotrader has on offer is one of Kermit's two they have in storage.

From the Aerotrader site:

I would argue that MOF's B-29 is most likely pretty darn close to flyable, if they were that type of museum. And I believe that it is civilian owned, not on loan. Correct?

kevin