Ohio museum volunteers building vintage war plane

Ohio museum volunteers building vintage war plane


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.

"Modesty aside — and I've been around airplanes as much as anybody here — I think we're building a better airplane than Boeing did," says volunteer Dick Bidlack, a 79-year-old Vietnam War fighter pilot who's been involved with the Champaign Aviation Museum project since it started in 2005. "But we're not trying to build 15 of them a day in a wartime scenario. We're taking years, so we have a little more freedom."

Although completion is still years away, the gleaming shell of the plane stretched out in the hangar these days is unmistakably a B-17, the rugged 74-foot-long, four-engine bomber called a "Flying Fortress" because it bristled with .50-caliber machine guns and could take an awful beating in combat.

Volunteer Frank Drain designed and painted the authentic-looking nose art, which features a leggy 1940s pinup girl against an outline of Ohio and the plane's Champaign Lady nickname.






"There was never a decision to make. When we started the project, it was to make it fly," says Dave Shiffer, whose ride aboard a touring B-17 with his father and brother in 2005 eventually led to the B-17 project and the founding of the nonprofit museum.

The initial chunks came from five different planes. The many other missing parts that can't be found and restored have to be fabricated under the watchful eye of Randy Kemp, the 56-year-old project manager who works with a changing cast of around 100 volunteers who have come from as far away as England just to be part of the effort.



If You Go:

Champaign Aviation Museum, Grimes Field Airport, 1652 N. Main St., Urbana, Ohio, 937-652-4710. http://www.champaignaviationmuseum.org. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

