Local museum faces challenges, loss of airplanes
Hangar for older airplanes could cost $30 million or more
By John Andrew Prime
jprime@gannett.com
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brett Dula was a mere colonel at Barksdale Air Force Base when he commanded the 2nd Bomb Wing.
However, those who know him remember that one of his proudest days was when he saw a derelict B-29 bomber emerge from the belly of a C-5 Galaxy transport, to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of neglect to blossom in the museum's air park.
That World War II bomber is an airplane a report from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force says should stay at Barksdale, a scant counter to the possible loss of its B-17 and the B-24. Following an unsatisfactory inspection and failing to gain initial accreditation by its national parent museum, the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale is working to avoid losing its signature air park.
One day local visitors could awake to find more than half its airplanes gone. The valuable older airplanes taken to Ohio and others, such as the British Vulcan bomber the Royal Air Force specifically gave to the local base, scrapped.
The B-24 bomber is associated with the base's greatest glory of World War II, serving as training site for many B-24 crews that eventually flew one of World War II's greatest and deadliest missions, the August 1943 attack on Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti. More than 700 airmen lost their lives in that mission, and five Medals of Honor were awarded, the most ever for a single combat exploit. One Medal of Honor went to a Shreveporter, Col. John Riley "Killer" Kane, son of prominent local Baptist minister John Franklin Kane. The loss of the B-24 would sever one of the few remaining links between the base, Kane and the Ploesti mission that helped define long-range strategic bombing.
Dula almost seemed like a proud father as he watched his magnesium-alloy baby plop onto the Barksdale tarmac, but he recognizes the hurdles the local museum faces.
"I wish the wing well in their attempts to bolster the museum but the cumulative effects of 30-plus years of inattention and insufficient manpower are evident in the pretty graphic photos the inspection team took," said Dula, now retired to Austin, Texas. He occasionally visits the area for family reasons and keeps tabs on the museum and the museum's founding curator and current director, Harold D. "Buck" Rigg, an old friend.
The base museum here faces challenges from leaner, meaner competitors out to get patrons, visitors and collections.
"Visit Pensacola, Omaha, Wright-Patterson, Dallas, Seattle or any number of first-class aviation museums and you'll quickly surmise this: To have a decent aviation museum, the airplanes must be located inside climate-controlled buildings and the aircraft have to be restored, not just parked there," Dula said.
About a dozen members of the 8th Air Force Museum Association met at the museum on base Thursday to further plans to correct deficiencies noted in the report from the parent museum, which declined to grant accreditation, in a first round of such inspections by the museum system.
The local museum is not alone in being faulted by observers both inside and outside the Air Force Museum system.
An editorial in the current issue of the prestigious aviation magazine "Warbird Digest" takes the whole museum system to task for arbitrarily refusing to certify aircraft for restoration and refurbishment by the private Commemorative Air Force and other recognized air preservation groups, and for neglecting displays at museums under its review.
Noting the museum system's refusal to certify a rare F-82, a twin-fuselaged version of the famed Mustang fighter, editor Tim Savage wondered just what the system planned to do with the airplane once it had it.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
