They got one part for the World War II-era bomber from under an elderly woman’s porch in the next town, and another was bought from someone who had it hanging in a bar in Colorado. One chunk was a prop in a 1960s TV show, and the tail section was salvaged from a wreck deep in the Alaska wilderness.
When dozens of volunteers are finished piecing them all together at a small Ohio museum, they’re going to roll out a better-than-new, airworthy version of one of history’s most famous military airplanes, the B-17, celebrated in Hollywood adventure movies like “Twelve O’Clock High” and “Memphis Belle.”
A behemoth of a vintage plane that hasn’t been manufactured new in nearly 70 years is being built one piece at time here – and when the volunteers can’t buy or barter for parts they need, they’re making them from scratch based on a collection of 28,000 original Boeing Co. blueprints fetched from microfiche at the Smithsonian Institution.
For the complete story by Mitch Stacy of The Associated Press, click here.
Photo by Al Behrman, AP
