![]() ![]() Many of the B–17 volunteers are in their late 60s, retired veterans of the Korean War who went on to run companies and teach physics. ![]() It may not fly ever again, but “The City of Savannah” represents a profound journey in American history. Now the outside of the WWII icon is as shiny as a new nickel, and its insides are being carefully reconstructed, all the way down to the gun turrets and every dial in the radio room. “We had to cut off the top of the tail with a skill saw,” chortles McLaughlin. Adding to the project’s challenges was the fact that when they trucked it back to the museum, the plane was 18 inches too tall for the gallery. It took 24 months to clean out the slurry from its firefighting days and sand down the rust, and the team tapped the engineers at Gulfstream to rebuild the nose. McLaughlin and a team of 35 volunteers have been restoring the plane ever since, intending it to be “the finest static B–17 in the world.” “We literally pushed it out from under the Space Shuttle Atlantis,” recalls Mighty Eighth volunteer Jerry McLaughlin, a retired CIA officer and lead project manager. Tucked away in a massive hangar filled with aerospace skeletons, “The City of Savannah” was forgotten until 2009, when the Mighty 8th unearthed her and brought her back home. Though the war ended before she could see combat, the bomber served as a mapping plane and helped put out wildfires out West before being retired to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC. It was christened “The City of Savannah” because local citizens raised a half million dollars towards its commission-an astronomical amount back in the days when a cup of coffee still cost a dime. It’s a piece of history with all kinds of relevance: Built in 1945, it was the 5000th plane to be processed through Hunter Army Air Field. A big one.Ī hundred and three feet across, the B–17 bomber fills the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum’s entire Combat Gallery, the tips of its spit–shined wings just inches from the walls. ![]()
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