Dr. Harry Friedman, one of the foremost experts on famed Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress Memphis Belle, will be presenting on Thursday, January 17 at 7 p.m. at the EAA Aviation Museum as part of the Aviation Adventure Speaker Series.
Harry, EAA 164173, who is a director on the Memphis Belle Memorial Association board and co-author of the book Memphis Belle: Dispelling the Myths, will speak about the World War II bomber’s stay in Memphis, Tennessee, following the conclusion of the war and its subsequent move to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, where it was restored and is now displayed.
As the first heavy bomber aircraft to complete 25 missions over Europe during WWII and return home to the U.S., Memphis Belle is widely regarded as one of the more significant surviving warbirds in the world. Having seen the 1944 documentary film The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress at a young age, Harry soon developed an interest in the aircraft that eventually led him to joining the MBMA in 1977, one year after it was formed.
“From a very early age, I was always interested in aviation and maybe it was sparked by my early exposure to the Memphis Belle through the 1944 (William) Wyler movie, which I saw at a very young age at my neighborhood movie theater,” Harry said. “Something about it resonated with me, and then the airplane came to Memphis in 1946 with it being out at the Air National Guard base — my brother, who was with the Air National Guard, took me out a couple times to go look at it. I maintained an interest not just in aviation but specifically with the Belle, collecting historical material and the like. The Memphis Belle Memorial Association was formed in 1976, I joined in 1977 and have been with it ever since then.”
Through the years that the airplane was in Memphis, Harry took on a number of roles within the MBMA, but always liked focusing on the actual restoration aspect of Memphis Belle and became an expert on the aircraft.
“I seemed to have a talent for scrounging and finding parts that we needed for the restoration,” he said. “My activity has always been with restoring the airplane at various levels. But along those lines, I was in various offices, including serving as president on two occasions of the MBMA and it just kind of built on itself. In 2003, we launched our book on the Memphis Belle, Dispelling the Myths, that was co-written with my colleague in England, Graham Simons. Over a three-year period, we wrote that book, which used material that he and I independently and then together accumulated on both sides of the Atlantic about the 91st Bomb Group and the airplane itself.”
When the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force took possession of Memphis Belle in 2005, Harry remained in an advisory role for the restoration, which took place over the next 13 years.
“I continued to collect parts for the aircraft, continued to coordinate with them on collecting the history of the airplane, made several trips up there and developed a close working relationship with the people in the administration and also the restoration folks. We donated quite a bit of archival material that we had accumulated over the years to the Air Force Museum and even to this day we still coordinate with them on certain aspects of the restoration.”
When the NMUSAF unveiled the restored Memphis Belle last spring, Harry said it was an emotional moment for him after all the years he spent involved with the aircraft.
“I’m not sure bittersweet is the proper word because all along we had hoped to keep the airplane in Memphis and restore it, we just reached a point where we realized that the City of Memphis was not really interested in financing it,” Harry explained. “The Air Force Museum had been making overtures to us to get the airplane and without going into all the politics that were involved, we finally called and said come get it. They did a great restoration and it turned out better than we could have done, although we had a lot of experts — we had 40 FedEx employees who volunteered their time, A&P mechanics and what have you, to starting the restoration in Memphis.
“But the Air Force had resources we didn’t have and it turned out to be great and for the greater good. A lot more people are going to see it at the Air Force Museum than they would in Memphis and that pretty much sealed it. The emotional impact, when they dropped the curtain and presented the airplane, that really went straight to the heart. I’d even seen it behind the scenes and knew what it looked like and how it was exhibited, but that moment with all the crowd and all the drama built up around it, it really went straight to the heart.”