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Volunteers and Boeing employees achieved a major milestone on the B-29 restoration project with the center wing installation Friday, July 15. The center wing installation, which took about three hours, is the culmination of more than five years of painstaking work by a dedicated group of volunteers.
It was the first time in more than five years that “Doc’s” center wing has sat proudly atop the 61-year-old Superfortress.
IDS-Wichita employees have been helping with the restoration process and have been heavily concentrating on the
center wing structure.
The team spent the last two months on an extensive overhaul of the center wing section which included replacing the wing skins.
“Our guys jumped in and worked very aggressively to keep a tight timeline despite some complications,” said Scott Bong, senior manager of operations for IDS-Wichita. “The first complication they found was the upper wing skin had to be replaced – and there were others. The job they did was just fantastic. I’m very proud of them.”
According to Bong, Boeing employees were able to take more than 2,000 pounds of weight from the wings in the process of the refurbishing.
“That’s an astounding amount of weight for a plane that size,” he said.
“Doc” has been at Boeing Wichita for the last five years since it arrived in May of 2000 for restoration. A volunteer group was formed to support its restoration.
The plane is owned by Tony Mazzolini of Cleveland, Ohio, a retired business executive and Air Force veteran, who found “Doc” in China Lake, Calif. Mazzolini partnered with The Boeing Company in 2000 to restore the aircraft to full flying status.
“This wing reattachment is such an important milestone,” Mazzolini said. “Our partnership with Boeing is magnificent.”
Now that the center wing span has been placed, workers and volunteers will begin the final phase of restoring Doc. They still need to raise money to refinish the engines, and restore instrumentation.
“We want to finish by the end of 2006 and begin flying in 2007,” Mazzolini said.
A permanent home is also being sought for the plane.
Doc was built in Wichita, along with 2,765 other B-29s at plants in Wichita, Kansas, (previously the Stearman Aircraft Co., bought by Boeing in 1929) and in Renton, Washington. The Bell Aircraft Co. built 668 of the giant bombers in Georgia, and the Glenn L. Martin Co. built 536 in Nebraska. Production ended in 1946.
B-29s were primarily used in the Pacific Theater during World War II. As many as 1,000 Superfortresses at a time bombed Tokyo, destroying large parts of the city. Finally, on Aug. 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered.
After the war, B-29s were adapted for several functions, including in-flight refueling, anti-submarine patrol, weather reconnaissance, and rescue duty. The B-29 saw military service again in Korea between 1950 and 1953, battling new adversaries: jet fighters and electronic weapons. The last B-29 in squadron use retired from service in September 1960.
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