Restoration Of The Cargo Plane Has Taken Three Years

For the past three years the Tulsa Squadron of the WWII Airborne Demonstration Team Foundation has been working diligently to restore the organization’s Douglas C-49 ‘Wild Kat’. Major restoration work has been provided by many skilled volunteers from the local aviation industry and also by interested aviation history enthusiasts in the Tulsa area, with more than 15,000 man-hours of effort put into the project to date. Now, the aircraft has again been certified as airworthy and returned to the air at Richard Lloyd Jones Jr. Riverside Airport (KRVS) in Tulsa.

The C-49 was flown from the organization’s headquarters at the former Frederick Army Air Field in Frederick, Oklahoma on January 24, 2016, exactly 75 years from the date of its first flight from the Douglas plant in Santa Monica, California. Since its arrival in Tulsa there has been major restoration work done on the Wright Cyclone powerplants, propellers, structure, and electrical and hydraulic systems. Cosmetic improvements have also been made throughout the interior and exterior of the plane.

With the completion of the aircraft, it can now return to the skies and fly alongside the organization’s C-47 ‘Boogie Baby’ and participate in “jump school”, which is held three times each year in Frederick.

Founded in 1996, the WWII Airborne Demonstration Team Foundation is the original parachute team dedicated solely to WWII-style parachuting and airborne operations. Second-to-none, it continually strives to be the most professional, authentic, and historically-accurate parachute team in the world. Being the first organization of its type, it is the premier precision roundcanopy parachute organization and the only parachute organization to have its own dedicated facilities and aircraft.

(Images provided with WWII Airborne Demonstration Team news release. Credit: Joe Glyda Photography)

FMI: www.wwiiadt.org