Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop transatlantic flight the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the X-1 rocket plane in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. The other four are the Wright Flyer flown by the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina the Spirit of St. To Duford, who had a model of the Memphis Belle hanging from the ceiling of his boyhood home in Michigan, the plane ranks among the five most important individual aircraft in American history.
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"When you look at the icons, the truly important aircraft, most of them are already restored." "It's the most important restoration of our generation, hands down," said museum curator Jeff Duford. But if the pace of restoration seems slow, museum officials say, it's because of the importance, if not reverence, they attach to the plane. The ball turret, flaps, tail-gun assembly, horizontal stabilizer and other parts lay elsewhere in Building 4-D, each the focus of highly detailed rehab efforts.Ī decade has passed since the Belle arrived in Dayton, and it'll be 2 ½ more years, probably in May 2018, before the plane takes its spot in the formal exhibit area of the museum devoted to World War II aircraft.
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In a cavernous hangar at the National Museum of the Air Force here, the fabled B-17F Flying Fortress shares floor space with a Titan IV rocket, C-82 and C-119 cargo planes and other machines undergoing painstaking restoration work carried out by a skilled but overstretched group of staff and volunteer technicians. DAYTON, Ohio - Stripped of paint and shorn of a nose section and internal components, the Memphis Belle these days looks less like the battered World War II bomber that spent nearly six decades displayed in its namesake city and more like a plane still lurching down the assembly line.