Doc, the B-29 Superfortress Left to Rot as a Bombing Target in the Mojave and Brought Back to Life by Volunteers in the Same Wichita Plant That Built Her

Doc is a B-29 Superfortress that spent more than 40 years as a Navy bombing target in California’s Mojave Desert before volunteers recovered her in 2000 and rebuilt her in Wichita, Kansas - the same city where she was originally manufactured. After roughly two decades of restoration, she flew again in summer 2016. Today she is one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world, alongside the aircraft known as FIFI.

What Was the B-29 Superfortress?

The B-29 Superfortress was the most complex and most expensive weapon the United States built during World War II - costing more than the atomic bomb program itself. It introduced technology that pushed far past what 1940s engineering was comfortable with.

Its features were remarkable for the era: a pressurized cabin so crews could fly high without freezing, remote-controlled gun turrets aimed by a gunner working a sight from inside the fuselage, and four Wright Duplex Cyclone engines - 18-cylinder radials that were notoriously prone to catching fire.

Boeing built nearly 4,000 of them, many at its plant in Wichita, Kansas. That detail matters to Doc’s story more than any other.

How Did the B-29 Named Doc Get Her Name?

Doc rolled off the line near the end of the war and never dropped a bomb in combat. By the time she was ready, the shooting was winding down, so she took on quieter duties: training and radar calibration work.

She was assigned to a radar squadron whose aircraft were painted after the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White - Grumpy, Sleepy, Bashful, Happy, and the rest. Our aircraft was painted as Doc, the sensible one with the glasses.

Why Was Doc Abandoned in the Desert?

By the early 1950s, the piston-engined B-29 was already obsolete. Jets were arriving, and no one had use for a bomber that consumed engines the way the B-29 did.

So Doc and many of her sisters were flown to the Navy’s weapons range at China Lake in the California desert and parked. Their final assignment was grim: to sit as targets for missile tests and weapons calibration.

Many of those aircraft were destroyed. Doc took hits too, but somehow stayed mostly intact - baking in the sun, forgotten, for more than 40 years. The paint burned off, the rubber turned to powder, and the wiring rotted inside the walls.

Who Rescued Doc?

The man who saved her was Tony Mazzolini, a former B-29 crewman who had long dreamed of finding one that could still fly rather than one sitting in a museum. At the time, FIFI - operated by the Commemorative Air Force in Texas - was essentially the only B-29 flying anywhere in the world.

In the 1990s, Mazzolini located the graveyard at China Lake, gained access to the range, and walked the rows of derelict bombers searching for one complete enough to save. He found Doc.

Freeing an aircraft from an active military weapons range took years of paperwork and persistence, but the deal eventually went through.

How Was Doc Recovered and Brought Home?

In the year 2000, crews went to retrieve her. You cannot simply fly an aircraft like that out of the desert - Doc had sunk into the ground and had to be dug out, disassembled, and loaded onto flatbed trucks.

They hauled her out of California and pointed her toward Wichita, Kansas - not just any hangar, but the same aviation town where thousands of wartime workers, many of them women working the night shift, had riveted her together in the first place. Roughly 60 years after she was built, Doc came home to be rebuilt in the shadow of the plant that made her.

What Did the Restoration Involve?

Restoring a four-engine heavy bomber that had been shot up and left to corrode for four decades was a task of a completely different scale than restoring a light aircraft or even a fighter.

Nearly every system had to be inspected and, in most cases, rebuilt or remade from scratch - the wiring, hydraulics, control cables, fuel system, and pressurization. Countless parts hadn’t been manufactured since the Truman administration.

So the volunteers made them by hand. They tracked down original drawings, reverse-engineered parts from museum aircraft, and scavenged from other hulks, relearning skills that had nearly vanished. The group called themselves Doc’s Friends - retired Boeing engineers, mechanics, machinists, former B-29 crewmen, and younger volunteers who wanted to be part of it.

They poured hundreds of thousands of hours into her, most of it volunteer labor, over roughly 20 years.

The Project Nearly Failed

This is the part restoration stories often skip: Doc’s revival nearly died more than once. Funding ran out repeatedly, and there were stretches when it looked like the aircraft would never leave the ground.

There was also a human cost. Over a two-decade project, some volunteers aged out and others passed away before they ever saw her fly. A number of the hands that rebuilt Doc never got to hear her engines run.

The Engines Were the Real Challenge

On the B-29, the engines were the terror of the entire program. The big Wright Duplex Cyclones overheated, swallowed valves, and started fires that could burn through a wing spar before a crew could respond. Early in the war, more B-29 crews died from engine trouble and accidents than from enemy action.

Getting four of those engines overhauled and running reliably 60 to 70 years later wasn’t a footnote - it was the whole objective. You do not fly a heavy bomber on engines you don’t trust. Eventually, the team got all four running.

When Did Doc Fly Again?

On a summer day in 2016, in Wichita, Kansas, a crew boarded Doc, ran up all four engines, and she lifted off - climbing out over the same Kansas plains she first flew over as a new aircraft decades earlier.

Witnesses describe grown men and women standing on the ramp in tears, because they understood exactly what it had taken, and they remembered the people who hadn’t lived to see it.

Why Doc Matters

There are only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses in the entire world - FIFI and Doc - out of nearly 4,000 built. The difference between Doc flying today and Doc being scrap in the desert came down entirely to people who decided she was worth saving.

There was no military or commercial reason, and no one profited. They did it because a flying aircraft is history you can hear, smell, and feel - something a black-and-white photograph can never be.

Doc still flies today, traveling the country and taking passengers aloft, earning her keep by showing herself to anyone who wants to come look.

Key Takeaways

• Doc is a B-29 Superfortress that served after WWII in training and radar-calibration roles and never saw combat.
• She spent more than 40 years as a Navy bombing target at China Lake before Tony Mazzolini located her in the 1990s and led her recovery in 2000.
• Volunteers known as Doc’s Friends rebuilt her in Wichita - her original birthplace - over about 20 years and hundreds of thousands of hours.
• Doc returned to flight in summer 2016 and is now one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world, alongside FIFI.
• The Wright Duplex Cyclone engines, historically the aircraft’s deadliest weakness, were the single greatest hurdle in the restoration.