The Doc is In—Wichita

Owing to some trouble with an implacable Austrian corporal, a reticent Japanese emperor, and a pathologically violent Italian prime minister—Boeing was compelled to build nearly four-thousand B-29 Superfortresses between 1942 and 1946. The famously temperamental, pressurized, computerized bombers teetered precariously atop the pinnacle of reciprocating-engine technology, and to this day—and one hopes all days—remain the only aircraft type to deliver nuclear ordnance in anger.

The Superfortress’s transcendent design is evident in vessels as disparate as Convair’s B-36 Peacemaker, Boeing’s 377 Stratocruiser, and the Corellian Engineering Corporation’s YT-1300 Millennium Falcon. Yet despite its historical significance and influence on both the aerospace industry and contemporary culture, only two B-29s remain airworthy in 2022. They’re called FIFI and Doc.

FIFI was built in 1944, and delivered to the United States Army Air Force the following year. She was retired in 1958 and put in storage at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California—where the fledgling U.S. Air Force used her for target practice. In 1966, the newly formed Confederate Air Force—a civilian group of aircraft enthusiasts and aerospace history buffs—set out to obtain specimens of WWII bomber aircraft. In 1971, the organization acquired FIFI from the USAF and got down to three years of restoration that culminated with the old girl’s return to flight status.

Doc was also manufactured in 1944 and delivered to the USAAF in 1945. In 1951, having seen no combat, Doc was rebuilt by the USAF into a radar calibration aircraft, and stationed at Griffiss Air Force Base in New York. It was at Griffiss that the Doc moniker—an homage to Snow White’s most learned chaperone—was bestowed upon the aircraft by the men who flew it. Alas, in 1956, Doc, too, was redesignated a China Lake bomb training target.

In 1987, after decades of languishing in the desert, Doc was discovered by a former USAF flight-engineer who spent the next 11-years trying to pull the aircraft from the Mojave sands. In 1998, Doc was returned to the selfsame Boeing facility in which it had been built fifty years before. Hundreds of volunteers invested over 300,000 hours in Doc’s restoration and return to airworthiness, and in 2016, Doc returned to the skies, piloted—serendipitously—by members of FIFI’s crew.

Doc will be featured at the Commemorative Air Force’s (formerly the Confederate Air Force) Gulf Coast Wing’s Fly the Fortress and Friends tour, from 05 to 07 September 2022. The Gulf Coast Wing’s B-17—known as Texas Raiders—and AT6/SNJ Texan will also participate in the event.

CAF Gulf Coast Wing executive officer Nancy Kwiecien states: “In addition to honoring the veterans who flew and maintained these aircraft, the CAF mission is to educate the public about U.S. military aviation history though hands-on experiences with these historic aircraft, as well as to inspire the next generation of aviators.”

FMI: www.commemorativeairforce.org, www.b29doc.com