Doc the B-29 Superfortress and the sixteen-year resurrection in the Wichita plant that built her

Doc is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress and one of only two airworthy examples left in the world. Built in Wichita, Kansas in 1944, she spent nearly half a century rotting on a desert bombing range before a 16-year, 300,000-hour restoration returned her to flight on July 17, 2016. Today she shares the skies with FIFI, the only other flying B-29.

What Is Doc the B-29 Superfortress?

Boeing built nearly 4,000 B-29s during World War II, yet today you can count the airworthy survivors on one hand and have fingers left over. There are exactly two: Doc and FIFI.

The B-29 was the most advanced bomber of the war and the airplane that ended the conflict in the Pacific. It also nearly broke Boeing to build. Its development cost more than the Manhattan Project—the atomic bomb was the second most expensive program of the war, and the airplane that carried it was the first.

The design was decades ahead of its time. A pressurized cabin let crews fly high, warm, and breathing easy at 30,000 feet. Remote-controlled gun turrets were aimed by an early analog computer. Four Wright twin-row 18-cylinder engines each produced 2,200 horsepower—and each had a dangerous tendency to catch fire. More airmen died testing and training in the B-29 stateside than in combat.

How Did Doc Get Her Name?

Doc rolled off the Boeing line in Wichita, Kansas—“the air capital”—in 1944, and the war ended before she ever fired a shot in anger. With no war left to fight, she was put to work as a radar calibration aircraft.

The Navy named groups of these support birds after characters, and Doc’s squadron of eight airplanes was named after the Seven Dwarfs: Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy, and the rest. This airplane was the doctor of the bunch. Crews painted a small cartoon Doc on her nose, spectacles and all, and the name stuck for life.

Why Did the B-29 End Up in the Desert?

By the 1950s the Air Force decided Doc had outlived her usefulness. They flew her to the Mojave Desert, to the gunnery range near China Lake, California, and parked her as a live target.

Fighter pilots practiced their aim on the airplanes around her, and dummy ordnance rained down. The desert finished the job over four decades. The paint blistered off, the tires rotted away, sand drifted into the engine nacelles and wheel wells, and birds nested inside. The most advanced aluminum airframe of its day sat oxidizing, going dull, chalky, and gray. Most people assumed she would be scrapped or shot to pieces.

Who Rescued Doc?

The man who saved her was Tony Mazzolini, a former B-29 crewman determined to find one airplane that could be restored. In the late 1980s he learned there were B-29s on the China Lake range, went to look, and found Doc half-buried in the sand.

Getting her out was its own campaign. It took Mazzolini the better part of a decade just to navigate the paperwork and convince the Navy to release a 60-ton bomber from an active weapons range. Recovery crews finally dug her out in the late 1990s, working in punishing desert heat. With no runway available, they did just enough work on-site to make her safe to transport, then trucked her out in pieces.

The 16-Year Restoration in Wichita

Doc returned to Wichita in 2000—home to the very city, and eventually the very kind of building, where she had been born more than half a century earlier. Boeing offered space, and the real work began.

This was not a fresh coat of paint. It was 16 years and roughly 300,000 man-hours, most of it volunteer. Retired Boeing engineers came back. Old-timers who had actually built B-29s during the war returned in their seventies and eighties to teach younger mechanics the craft. Volunteers donated their Saturdays for a decade and a half.

There is no parts store for a B-29. The crew learned to manufacture components that hadn’t been built since the Truman administration. They scavenged parts from museum airplanes and other wrecks, and machined pieces from scratch using original drawings when they could find them. Control surfaces, wiring, and hydraulics all had to be brought to airworthy standard—not merely display-worthy. A museum piece only has to look right and sit still; an airplane carrying people has to be correct in every rivet, because there’s no pulling over at 30,000 feet.

The temperamental Wright Cyclone engines had to run reliably enough that the FAA would certify the airplane to carry human beings. The FAA does not grant those approvals for sentiment.

There were lean years. Money ran dry and the project stalled more than once. Doc sat grounded for stretches while supporters wondered if she’d become the world’s most elaborate static display. Some volunteers who started the project died before seeing her fly—the airplane outlasted some of the very people who saved her. A new organization, Doc’s Friends, formed to push the restoration across the finish line.

When Did Doc Fly Again?

In the summer of 2016, the crew rolled Doc onto the ramp with all four engines hung and ready. On July 17, 2016, she flew for the first time in over half a century, climbing away from Wichita as if the previous seventy years had never happened.

With that single flight, the number of airworthy B-29s in the world doubled, from one to two. The other survivor is FIFI, operated by the Commemorative Air Force in Texas, which for decades had been the only flying B-29 anywhere. When Doc and FIFI first flew together in formation, two airplanes both back from the brink shared the same patch of sky.

Can You See Doc the B-29 Today?

Yes. Doc has a permanent home in Wichita with a hangar and education center, and she tours the country during the flying season. Visitors can stand beneath her enormous 141-foot wingspan and touch skin that was riveted in place during the war, saved from the desert, and rebuilt rivet by rivet.

Some people even get to fly. Doc’s Friends sells experience flights to keep her airworthy, because an airplane like this is enormously expensive to operate and sharing the experience is what keeps her in the air.

Key Takeaways

• Doc is one of only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses in the world, alongside FIFI of the Commemorative Air Force.
• Built in Wichita in 1944, she served as a radar calibration aircraft before being used as a desert bombing-range target for decades.
• Former B-29 crewman Tony Mazzolini located and rescued her, with recovery from China Lake completed in the late 1990s.
• Her restoration took 16 years and roughly 300,000 mostly volunteer man-hours, returning her to flight on July 17, 2016.
• Doc is based in Wichita, tours during the flying season, and offers public experience flights to fund her continued operation.