With Blue Ash Airport Likely To Close, My Gal Sal Will Head For A Louisiana Museum

A vintage WWII bomber which spent more than 50 years buried in a Greenland glacier is being shrink-wrapped and prepped for a move from Blue Ash airport near Cincinnati to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

The move is the result of a battle between Blue Ash and the city of Cincinnati, neither of which wants to pay to keep Blue Ash Airport open past August 29th.

The B-17 Flying Fortress (similar airplane pictured in file photo) went down in Greenland in 1942, and was salvaged from the ice in 1995. She was acquired by Bob Ready, who began a restoration project in 2000, according to a report from television station WKRC in Cincinnati. In the process, they had hoped to build a museum around the airplane, and Ready had spent a considerable amount of his own money to build a new hangar for the airplane, which he had hoped would be a centerpiece for a revived Blue Ash Airport.

But the squabble between the two municipalities means the likely loss of the airport to the community, and that would leave My Gal Sal without a home.

So, she is on her way to the museum in New Orleans, where she will be showcased in a new, $30 million building. Ready said he is "honored" to donate the airplane to the museum, but is sorry to see it going so far away.

FMI: www.nationalww2museum.org