Mighty Eighth museum returns WWII artifact to famous plane

It's not your typical reunion.

On Sept. 25, a pilot instrument panel from storied World War II bomber the Memphis Belle was returned to its rightful place aboard the airplane in Ohio. But it passed through Pooler first as a behind-the-scenes exhibit at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force.

"Really, since close to the time we got it, I always felt like that panel belonged on that airplane," said Henry Skipper, the Mighty Eighth museum's president and CEO. "That's one of the most famous airplanes in American history."

Famous flights

Skipper formally presented the panel to staff at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio, where the Memphis Belle is being restored for an exhibit scheduled to open in spring 2018.

The B-17F Flying Fortress was the first heavy bomber to complete 25 missions over war-torn Europe. Eleven of those were combat missions.

That was a big deal. The odds of survival were terrible. About 30,000 U.S. airmen were killed in combat during World War II.

"There were two missions that the Army Air Forces flew where we lost 60 bombers in one mission," said Jeff Duford, the curator at the Air Force museum who's overseeing the Memphis Belle's restoration. "Each of those bombers has 10 crewmen in it, so that's 600 airmen. And that happened twice."

Boeing Co.'s B-17s were emblematic of the United States' strategic bombing campaign to stamp out Nazi Germany's ability to produce war machines and supplies.

The Belle, like many B-17s in the second World War, was manned by the Eighth Air Force, which was at the time based in Savannah. When the plane completed its 25th mission in 1943, it returned stateside for a bond tour to try to convince Americans that signing up as an airman wasn't necessarily a death sentence.

The tour was a year before D-Day.

Journey

The Memphis Belle's fame didn't fade. Part of the publicity tour included a 1944 documentary that used real footage from the war. It was thrown back into pop culture in 1990 as the subject of a feature film.

The plane itself fell into disrepair, sitting outside in Memphis, Tenn., for decades.

At some point after the plane was put out of service, part of its instrument panel was stripped and given to Clairmont Egtvedt, a former Boeing CEO and board chairman who ran the company when it began producing the Flying Fortresses. Egtvedt's widow passed it on to a family friend - a Mighty Eighth veteran named Lowell Williamson.

Eventually, it was fixed to a coffee table along with a data plate from the aircraft containing the Belle's serial number. In 2009, Williamson donated the panel to Pooler's Mighty Eighth museum, where it was kept in an archive room. It spent a few years at a history museum in North Carolina, the home state of Col. Robert Morgan, the pilot and commanding officer of the Memphis Belle, which was named after a woman he dated.

"Now it's come full circle," Skipper said. "It'll go back on the plane it came off of."

Restoration

Since 2005, the 204-foot plane has been getting a face-lift at the national museum on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The work will likely last at least another two years.

"The restoration is stem to stern, 100 percent complete," said Duford, the project manager. "It will be done accurately."

There's more to it than a paint job and cleaning.

"One of the challenges has been finding parts because we don't have all the parts for the aircraft," Duford said.

The first thing restoration staff did was strip the plane. They've fully restored the engines, turrets and propellers. They'd actually fabricated an instrument panel, which they'll now be swapping for the real deal.

"Visually it wouldn't be different," Duford said. "But (the fabricated panel) is not part of the airplane, and we go to great lengths to keep the aircraft as original as possible. When it comes down to it, they're artifacts."

He said it was "truly significant" to be getting the data plate back as well - it's "a 100 percent identifying piece of the airplane."

Restoration staff are glad to have the items back with the Belle.

"It's tremendously responsible of the people who are making sure we can make the Belle that much more whole, that much more intact," Duford said. "It's the right thing to do."