Warbird Information Exchange

Air museum collection landing at Madras Airport Vintage planes will soon make the trip from Tillamook to Central Oregon

By Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Published May 9, 2014 at 12:01AM
The skies around Jefferson County will be a bit more active than usual over the next few weeks, as a collection of vintage warplanes moves from the Tillamook Air Museum to their new home at the Madras Airport.

The museum announced plans to relocate to Central Oregon last year, as part of a larger move by Erickson Group Ltd., the company that owns the bulk of the WWII-era planes displayed in Tillamook. A new Erickson venture retrofitting commercial jets to serve as firefighting air tankers, Erickson Aero Tanker settled on Madras as its base of operations, and company founder Jack Erickson opted to relocate the museum as well.

Mike Oliver, general manager of the Tillamook Air Museum and future manager of the museum in Madras, said seven planes have made the journey over the mountains already. If weather conditions hold, plans call for flying most of the rest to Madras before the end of the month, starting Sunday.

All but two of the 25 planes in Erickson’s collection are airworthy, Oliver said.

A new, 65,000-square-foot hangar that will house the planes at the Madras Airport is nearly complete, Oliver said. For now, planes including a B-17 Flying Fortress, an AD-4W Skyraider and an F4U-7 Corsair, are parked in the 44,000-square-foot hangar built in 2010 to spur new investment and activity at the airport.

The museum has not set an opening date, Oliver said, but it’s likely to be sometime after the Airshow of the Cascades on Aug. 22-23.

A handful of Erickson-owned planes, including the B-17 and a P-51 Mustang, were featured at last year’s air show. This year, Oliver said the entire Erickson collection should be on display, and the B-17 will be sporting a new look.

At last summer’s air show, Tillamook Air Museum staff photographer Lyle Jansma said Erickson acquired the B-17 as a nod to the history of the Madras Airport, which was expanded to serve as a training base for B-17 pilots during World War II. At this summer’s air show, the public will get its first look at the plane with a new paint job and new name, the “Madras Maiden.”

Oliver said the current plan is to unveil the new-look of the B-17 on the first day of the air show, the same day the city plans to dedicate a memorial to B-17 pilots and crew on the airport grounds.

With Erickson’s collection on the way to Madras, the fate of what remains in Tillamook is somewhat uncertain.

The museum’s lease on a World War II-era blimp hangar continues through 2016, Oliver said, and for now, the plan is to keep the Tillamook museum open with a smaller collection of planes on loan from private collectors and the Navy.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com

Interesting. I'm assuming that P-39 flew over to Madras?. That would make three FLYABLE P-39's according to what I believe to know is correct?

I believe the P-39 was restored as static and trucked in.

new paint job and new name, the “Madras Maiden.”

Sad. The loss of the Chuckie name and paint job is truly the end of an era. I guess time marches on, and nothing stays the same for long... still... it's really, really sad...

The P-39 was trucked in about this time last year and assembled something like an oversized model kit.The airplane acually looks good,but it's anything but airworthy.

That should be enough pictures to give the general idea

With so many airworthy B-17s recently being grounded (the French aircraft, the Boeing Bee, etc. ) we should just be happy that "Chuckie", whatever its name, will still be flying and not a stuffed and mounted example like a Dodo bird.