Rescued From The 'Boneyard' At Davis-Monthan AFB In AZ

The Naval Air Station Tillamook Air Museum in Tillamook, OR has added a C-27A Spartan to its collection.

The airplane was rescued after languishing nearly two decades in the boneyard at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. The airplane that now is on display at the museum is one of only five of the type known to still be in existence.

The Tillamook County Pioneer reports that a team restored the C-27, which they dubbed "Christine" after the Plymouth Fury in a Stephen King novel, to airworthy condition for the trip from AZ to the museum in OR.

That trip took them from AZ to Klamath Falls. OR, where they landed to wait for coastal fog to clear.

Jim Feemster, who owns Hillsboro-based On the Deck, a “heavy rescue, recovery and transport” company, is a retired U.S. Navy Special Forces first class petty officer and a classic aircraft enthusiast. He said there were a lot of skeptics who thought the plane would never fly again. He said he was skeptical too, after several weeks working on the airplane, but eventually she got back off the ground. "I flew back with the plane from Tucson in the engineer seat to watch the gauges and repair the plane if needed," Feemster told the paper. "Nobody thought we could get the plane to fly again and I was skeptical myself after several weeks of trying. I would have liked to see the looks on the faces of the guys at the base when they came to work on Monday and the plane was gone and they found out we flew her out.”

The museum reopened last week after being closed for its annual cleaning.

(Image from the Tillamook Air Museum Facebook page)

FMI: www.tillamookair.com/aircraft