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to Wichita to work closely with Doc’s Friends restoration team leading up to this moment. Charlie Tilghman, retired Southwest Airlines captain and former Air Force pilot, is pilot-in-command.
“Anytime you are dealing with an airplane as big as a B-29, it takes lots and lots of people. It is a joint effort,” explained Tilghman. “This is an airplane with no pilot amenities: no nose-wheel steering, no anti-skid brakes, no reverse, no boosted controls, no yaw damper, no autopilot. It takes a little muscle to fly ... but it’s a good-flying airplane.”
Cheers suddenly erupt. Doc has begun to taxi. The world is about to gain its second flying B-29 Superfortress.
B-29’s Role in WWII
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress made its way to the drawing board in 1940 after a request was released from the U.S. Army Corps for a long-range heavy bomber aircraft. Tensions were rising overseas; continental Europe had fallen under Axis control and the need was becoming urgent for an aircraft that could reach Europe from the United States.
The request crossed the desk of Phil Johnson, president of the Boeing Aircraft Company. By June, Boeing approved the Model 345, and a wooden mock-up was completed by the end of the year. The urgency of production soon catapulted.
On Dec. 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United Sates was violently thrown into war. Immediately, military and industry representatives hammered out a plan for B-29 production and determining Wichita would be a base for manufacturing and assembly. Incredibly, the prototype B-29 successfully flew just nine months later. At this point, 1,650 B-29s had already been ordered by the military.
Double in weight, payload and range of its predecessors, this was the most technologically advanced aircraft of its time. It was also the first pressurized warplane with automatic gun turrets (state-of-the-art innovations that ultimately made the B-29 the most expensive weapons project of World War II, surpassing even the Manhattan Project).
March 2017
Flight test faced numerous issues, most notably the engines. The 2,200-horsepower Wright 3350 18-cylinder radial engine was simultaneously in development and designed to be the most powerful of its time. But incredibly, Boeing still met the military’s pressing deadline and the B-29 was combat-ready.
Thousands then flew to airfields in the Mariana Islands and prepared to embark on grueling bombing missions. By the end of 1944, hundreds of aircraft departed these fields at 30- to 45-second intervals to fly missions of over 14 hours and 3,500 miles almost entirely over water.
Infamously, it was the B-29 named Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, ultimately leading to the end of the war in August 1945 and sealing the airplane’s importance in history.
Doc’s Story Nearly Ends on a Bombing Range
Doc’s chronicle began in December 1944 when it rolled off the Boeing Wichita assembly line (Serial No. 44-69972) and was delivered to the U.S. Army Air Corps the following March. The giant bomber earned its name when it was assigned to the “Snow White” radar squadron, each of whose B-29s were names after one of the seven dwarfs.
During World War II, radar squadrons were used to train the navigator
bombardiers on the latest radar equipment used for bombing and routing. Radar was exceptionally important because most of the bombings took place at night.
Over the next 11 years, Doc would serve in various noncombat roles before being retired to China Lake, California, to be used as a target for Navy missile testing and bombing practice. For 42 years, it sat in the Mojave Desert until Tony Mazzolini and a team of local volunteers were finally able to rescue the relatively unscathed warbird from its resting place in 1998.
Doc Restoration a Massive Volunteer Effort
Deplete of the necessary resources to piece the giant airplane back to operational status in California, Tony Mazzolini soon contacted Doc’s birthplace, Boeing Wichita. Boeing executive at the time, Jeff Turner, welcomed the opportunity to have the World War II hero return to its home. So the rescue team in China Lake, led by Tony, disassembled Doc and shipped to Wichita on seven flatbed trailers in 2000.
“People were just thrilled to see the airplane, regardless if it came in parts or not, because it was a Wichita product ... and they knew the mission. Restore the airplane and bring it back to flight again. A lot of people wanted to be a part of that program,” said Mazzolini.
For 42 years, Doc sat in the Mojave Desert until Tony Mazzolini and a team of local volunteers were finally able to rescue the warbird in 1998.
Continued on page 22
TWIN & TURBINE • 19
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOC’S FRIENDS.