A gleaming silver and banana-yellow Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a vintage bomber from World War II, rolled past the window behind David Hunt. It’s up for sale.
Seated at his desk inside the Military Aviation Museum in Pungo, Va., Hunt, the museum’s director, reiterated Saturday that the business is fine – for now. Although the museum won’t close soon, some of the facility’s planes, worth anywhere between $20,000 to $7 million each, may have to go to keep the operation aloft.
Last Monday, Gerald Yagen, owner of the museum and one of the world’s largest collections of World War I- and World War II-era planes, announced that he no longer can afford to keep the collection and the museum. The four vocational schools he owns, including the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, Centura College and Tidewater Tech, are being sold. No details were disclosed.
For the complete story by Rashod Ollison of The Virginian-Pilot, click here.
