A behind-the-scenes look at the restoration of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress City of Savannah will be the Aviation Adventure Speaker Series topic of discussion on Thursday, October 18 at the EAA Aviation Museum. Jerry McLaughlin, the special projects coordinator at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia, will present on the nine-year process of restoring the World War II-era bomber.
Coming off the production line the week after WWII ended in Europe in May of 1945, City of Savannah began its life by immediately going into storage. From there, two WWII veterans acquired it in 1947, paying just $325 for the airplane, and placed it in front of their high school in North Dakota as a war memorial. A few years later, the school district sold the airplane to a private buyer in Florida before it was acquired by a company in Canada that used it for aerial photography to help map out the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line in northern Canada. Following that, it was used for aerial firefighting in the western U.S. and eventually its owner traded it to the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution for two other airplanes that were better suited to his needs. There it sat for years, until events led to the beginning of its restoration in 2009.
With then-President George W. Bush in the Savannah, Georgia, area for a political rally held at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, the B-17 sitting in storage at the Smithsonian came up in a conversation between the museum’s CEO and the president.
“President Bush was here to endorse another candidate for Congress and they had the rally at the museum,” Jerry explained. “The CEO of the museum got five minutes with the president and asked him about the B-17 up in Virginia and said, ‘We want it.’ The president said, ‘You’re the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, you should have it!’ He turned to one of the aides and said ‘Get this guy that B-17.’”
About three weeks later, the Smithsonian called. The airplane was the property of National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. The museum hired a company to transport the bomber back to Georgia, a process that required it to be disassembled and reassembled. Once it was in the museum, Jerry and the two other men involved in this process realized just how much of a challenge they were in for.
“Our motto was, ‘We don’t even know what we don’t know,’” he said. “None of us had ever been involved in something like this.”
Fortunately, a friend of a friend who had previously worked at the Smithsonian visited the museum and was able to give the restoration team some valuable advice about keeping the airplane indoors, having stable management, finding local expertise (which they did through both volunteers and Savannah-based Gulfstream Aerospace), and acquiring funding.
The restoration took close to a decade partly because it was an intensive process that cut no corners.
“Cleaning the outside and the inside took about a year,” Jerry said. “Then we did the ball turret and built the tail turret. We bought a chin turret. There was wood in the airplane, with desks and everything. Who knew that? So we had to hire carpenters and that took a few months. Then we had to wire the whole inside of the airplane so we could have power to the turrets and lights and everything.”
In 2015, after six years of restoration work on the outside of the airplane, that part was finished. For the past three years, the team has been working to restore the inside. In total, around 150 volunteers have worked on the restoration over the course of nine years.
“We dedicated the airplane six years to the week after we brought it home,” Jerry said. “At this point, the outside looked perfect. For the last three years, we’ve made the inside perfect. It’s like original. It’s amazing. It’s the best one in the United States in my opinion.”
City of Savannah already has two working turrets and Jerry said the goal is to get a third turret working within the next few months, which would make it the only B-17 in existence with three working turrets that are shown to the public.
“It’s been a very unique experience,” Jerry said of the restoration. “The camaraderie of the guys who’ve worked on the airplane has been great.”