It’s not easy for a new aviation-themed attraction to impress the town of Dayton, Ohio, where the official motto is “Birthplace of Aviation”.
After all, a Wright Flyer III – restored by Orville Wright himself – sits on display in the town’s Carillon Historic Park. A museum honouring the legacy of local hero Neil Armstrong is open to visitors in Wapokoneta, 60 miles to the north. Tourists can pay a fee for a 30min flight in a restored North American B-25 over at the Champaign Aviation Museum in nearby Urbana. And a replica of the Wright Brothers’ original hangar on Huffman Prairie, just outside Dayton, stands just outside the gates of Wright-Patterson AFB, which is also the site of the National Museum of the US Air Force.
Memphis Belle is approaching the end of a long stay in the museum's restoration hangar
US Air Force
The museum is adding to this wealth of aviation history with another highly anticipated attraction opening on 17 May 2018.
On the 75th anniversary of the last mission flown by the Boeing B-17F nicknamed the Memphis Belle, the NMUSAF will place on permanent display the famous, four-engined bomber after an arduous, 12-year restoration project.
Indeed, the Wright-Patterson restoration hangar where the B-17F still resides has been closed to public tours during the past five months of the finishing work, while the Memphis Belle’s volunteer restorers complete the task of rebuilding the interior and painting the aircraft’s exterior. The public has been allowed to watch as the aircraft has undergone restoration since 2005, but as it takes final display form the restorers want to build up some anticipation for the 17 May event.
Ambitious plans
The museum has big plans for the Memphis Belle exhibit. The NMUSAF is already one of the landmarks of the aviation history world. Endowed with a right of first refusal for any retired USAF aircraft, the facility’s four hangars already display most of the service’s most historically significant aircraft. Bock’s Car, the Boeing B-29 that dropped the A-bomb on Nagasaki, has a privileged perch in the World War Two collection. Other types still in operation – including the Northrop Grumman B-2 and Lockheed Martin F-22 and U-2 – adorn another gallery. The newly opened Hangar 4 is yet another marvel of rare, one-off specimens gathered in close proximity, including the North American XB-70, Lockheed YF-12, Northrop YF-23 and Grumman X-29.
Set against even that collection, the Memphis Belle will stand out. Amid horrific losses during the Allied strategic bombing campaign, the US Army made heroes of the Memphis Belle’s crew for being the first to complete 25 missions. That claim was a myth used to serve a propaganda effort. Other aircraft in Europe and the Pacific had already completed 25 missions before the Memphis Belle. In this case, the facts seem less important than the historical interpretation of Memphis Belle’s role in the war effort, says museum curator Jeff Duford.
The crew of the Memphis Belle at an air base in England after the 25th mission in June 1943
US Air Force
“What’s really important about the Belle is not it being the first,” he says. “If you want to talk about air force service and sacrifice and an American symbol, the Belle is one of those. This is a national icon in the same sense that the flag that flew at Iwo Jima is a national icon.”
As a result, the Memphis Belle is expected to draw crowds to the museum, like few of the facility’s other star attractions. So the museum has made special plans for how this particular B-17 – one of nearly 12,700 built during the war – will be displayed.
“We’ll have a big reveal. It’s a technique and a way that we’re doing it that we’ve never done before. And it will be very exciting,” Duford says. “Most of the airplanes in the museum are behind barriers, and we just have to do that because of the space. The airplanes that are truly significant we give privileged space to. Visitors will be able to walk entirely around the Memphis Belle. It will not be behind a barrier.”
Original Wright buildings
As the NMUSAF anticipates new interest, so does the entire aviation community. Dayton’s relationship with its aviation heritage has ebbed and flowed over time. Many of the Wright company’s original buildings were allowed to be demolished or to fall into disrepair.
An effort is now under way to raise funds to restore the original Wright aircraft factory. The building spent several decades as a plant for automotive parts, feeding assembly lines further north in Detroit. The site is now abandoned, but the Dayton-based National Aviation Heritage Area is raising funds to purchase the site. In addition to making it a new tourist destination, empty lots on the industrial-zoned land are being offered as a manufacturing site for aerospace suppliers and aircraft manufacturers.
If the group’s effort is successful, the original Wright aircraft facility will become yet another historic attraction in the south-west corner of Ohio, joining sites such as Hawthorn Hill, Orville Wright’s mansion, which was completed in 1914.
The pending opening of the Memphis Belle exhibit at the NMUSAF has raised expectations across the community, but it’s been a long time coming.
After returning to the USA in May 1943, the Memphis Belle operated as a trainer for bomber crews, Duford says. It was retired initially to an aircraft bone yard in Oklahoma. Years later the city of Memphis decided to make the bomber a local attraction, but the move did the aircraft no favours. The aircraft was displayed outside and was raided by vandals and souvenir hunters. In addition, the interior corroded in the sultry Memphis climate, Duford says.
By the early 2000s, the city of Memphis decided it could no longer support the aircraft, so NMUSAF recalled the historic prize to Wright-Patterson AFB in 2005. Hopes of readying the aircraft for public display within 10 years faded as the restorers catalogued the required modifications.
In addition to repainting and addressing corrosion issues, several major structures needed replacing, including the distinctive, two-piece glazed nose of the B-17F. Despite the challenges, the museum found widespread support throughout the aviation restoration community. A private museum honouring the 8th Air Force donated a key artifact – the Memphis Belle’s instrument panel, which has now been re-installed it in the aircraft.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
