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From the Chicago Tribune ....
Making a `Rat' fly again
On World War II bomber's 65th birthday, Marengo man awaits day it will take to sky
By Richard Wronski
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 14, 2006
As World War II bombers go, the Desert Rat will never achieve the glory of the Memphis Belle, the B-17 Flying Fortress originally made famous by a wartime documentary and later a 1990 Hollywood film.
But while the movie-star B-17 sits grounded inside a Memphis exhibition, the Desert Rat is being reborn. On Tuesday, the plane's 65th birthday, owner Mike Kellner and his crew of warplane buffs will look forward to the Desert Rat returning to the sky.
For 10 years Kellner and volunteers have devoted evenings and weekends to rebuilding the once-scrapped bomber piece-by-piece, rivet-by-rivet in Kellner's rural Marengo barn. They estimate it will take another 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars to reassemble the fuselage, replace the wings and install instruments.
Kellner hopes to someday fly the Desert Rat as a testament to the courageous airmen who fought in World War II and the American workers who built the planes.
"The plane's a memorial in a sense, an icon, a symbol of freedom in my mind," Kellner said. "If they hadn't had that kind of airplane at the start of World War II, there are some who say we wouldn't have been able to win."
Kellner and his fellow enthusiasts share an obsession with restoring vintage military aircraft, or "warbirds." There are warbird Web sites, magazines and organizations. Restored warplanes attract thousands to air shows such as the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual fly-in in Oshkosh, Wis.
Enthusiasts' favorites run from fighters to bombers. Kellner's is the B-17 Flying Fortress, which he considers the "classic example of what an airplane should look like."
Of the 12,731 B-17s built from 1935 to 1945, only about 40 remain today, and about a dozen are still flying. Those numbers are growing slightly, thanks to restoration's like Kellner's.
One of the best-known warbird enthusiasts is Don Brooks, a Georgia auto-parts magnate whose Liberty Foundation owns two B-17s. Brooks' Liberty Belle will start a U.S. tour next month.
Brooks, 55, said he believes the planes foster respect for those who flew them.
"The more you learn about what [World War II airmen] did, the more you appreciate the sacrifices they made," Brooks said.
He and Kellner belong to an informal organization of B-17 enthusiasts.
Boeing and other manufacturers churned out B-17s at a frantic pace during the war, with as many as 16 a day coming off assembly lines. Restoring them by hand with volunteer help takes years; parts have to be fabricated individually.
Most planes that survived the war were cut up for scrap. One of Brooks' B-17s was salvaged from the bottom of a lake in Labrador, Canada.
The soft-spoken Kellner, 50, is rebuilding the Desert Rat authentically, even using the original type of rivet instead of a more modern version.
"It's labor-intensive. Every airframe part is handmade," he said. "We need a lot of parts, and to do it right takes time."
Palatine resident Bill Stanczak, one of Kellner's helpers, is the Desert Rat's technical expert. For parts, Stanczak consults the B-17's original blueprints, which he has scanned into a computer from microfilm.
"Some of the guys consider me a B-17 archeologist," said Stanczak, 38, a Motorola executive. "Basically, it's kind of a treasure hunt or jigsaw puzzle. You hunt down the parts you can find, the others you make. It's actually a lot of fun."
Kellner's barn is filled with the fuselage, still in several sections, along with wings, engines, aluminum and metal-bending tools. A .50-caliber machine gun replica guards a shelf. Model warplanes of all types fly from the rafters.
When the group of Kellner, Stanczak and several others meets Tuesday evenings and Saturdays, a cacophony of hammering, cutting and riveting fills the air.
The Desert Rat got its name on training duty in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Later, it carried cargo, mainly wounded soldiers, in Indochina and shuttled military officers to Greenland and Iceland.
It was in Bangor, Maine, that Kellner found the Desert Rat at its last stop, a scrap yard. He bought the pieces for $7,000 and shipped them home.
So far, Kellner's endeavor has cost him about $100,000. When rebuilt and flying, the Desert Rat will be worth more than $1 million, Kellner estimates.
In addition to working on the Desert Rat, Kellner and partner Chuck Giese of Palatine now make a full-time business of fabricating parts for other warplane restorations. They also build remote-controlled P-51 Mustang replicas.
On Tuesday, the Desert Rat crew will commemorate Feb. 14, 1941, the date the plane was certified. "We've talked about getting a little cake," Kellner said.
They might reminisce about their favorite warbird movies, such as "Twelve O'Clock High," which they consider an inspiration. The 1990 "Memphis Belle," a fictionalized account of the exploits of the first crew to fly 25 bombing missions in Europe during World War II, was "too Hollywood," Kellner said.
For authenticity, the warbird fans say nothing beats the acclaimed 1944 documentary "Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress" by famed director William Wyler, who accompanied crew members on actual missions.
"I just love seeing any air footage," Kellner said. "You put yourself in their place. They were my heroes, the guys who flew those planes."
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rwronski@tribune.com
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