Doc, the B-29 Superfortress That Spent Forty Years as a Bombing Target in the Mojave Before a Handful of Volunteers Brought Her Back to the Sky

SUMMARY: How a B-29 named Doc survived 40 years as a Mojave bombing target and flew again thanks to 300,000 volunteer hours.

Doc is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress that spent more than 40 years as a bombing target in the Mojave Desert before a group of volunteers restored her to flight, returning her to the sky over Wichita, Kansas in July 2016. Today she is one of only two airworthy B-29s left in the world out of nearly 4,000 Boeing built. Her rescue stands as one of the most remarkable warbird restorations in American aviation history.

What Was the B-29 Superfortress?

The B-29 Superfortress was the most complicated, most expensive, and most ambitious aircraft of the Second World War. It cost more to develop than the atomic bomb it would eventually carry.

It was a genuine technological leap: a pressurized cabin, remote-controlled gun turrets, and four Wright 2,200-cubic-inch radial engines, each producing north of 2,000 horsepower. Those engines were powerful but temperamental, with a well-earned reputation for catching fire.

Boeing built the bombers at a plant in Wichita, Kansas that ran around the clock, with thousands of workers turning out the largest bomber America had ever fielded.

The Story of Doc: Named After a Dwarf

Doc rolled off the Wichita line in the spring of 1945, just as the war in the Pacific was winding down. As a result, Doc never flew a combat mission.

Instead, she was assigned to a squadron of radar calibration aircraft. In a rare flash of military humor, each aircraft in the group was named after one of the seven dwarfs: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Happy, and Dopey. Doc flew training and radar work through the late 1940s and into the 1950s.

How Doc Ended Up as a Bombing Target

By 1956, the piston-engine B-29 was obsolete. The jet age had arrived with the B-47 and B-52, and thousands of surplus B-29s were scrapped - melted down into pots, pans, and beer cans.

Doc received a different fate. She was flown to the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, California, parked in the Mojave, and used for target practice. Crews dropped inert bombs around her to calibrate weapons and train aircrews.

For more than 40 years, she sat there. The paint blistered off, the aluminum baked, the tires rotted, and the airplane settled onto her belly in the sand. Rattlesnakes moved into the cockpit. To most eyes, she was scrap.

Who Saved Doc?

Doc was rescued by a man named Tony Mazzolini, a lifelong B-29 enthusiast who dreamed of finding one complete enough to fly again - not a static museum piece, but a genuine flyer.

In the mid-1990s, Mazzolini located Doc half-buried in the sand at China Lake. Getting her out took years of paperwork and negotiation, including convincing the Navy to release her and working out how to move a bomber with a 98-foot wingspan off a live weapons range. In 1998, she was finally recovered and eventually brought home to Wichita - the very city that built her.

How Was Doc Restored to Flight?

Doc did not fly again because of a corporation or a government contract. She flew again because of volunteers - a group that became known as Doc’s Friends.

They were retired Boeing engineers, sheet metal workers, and machinists, working alongside young people learning the trade. They gave up their Saturdays for more than a decade and a half. The team disassembled the aircraft nearly to the bone.

A B-29 contains hundreds of thousands of parts, and many no longer existed. So the volunteers fabricated parts from scratch, working from original Boeing drawings when they could find them and careful measurement when they couldn’t. They cured corrosion, rewired systems, and rebuilt the notoriously difficult Wright radial engines.

In total, more than 300,000 volunteer hours went into the restoration. Some of those volunteers died before the airplane ever flew, but their friends kept going.

When Did Doc Fly Again?

On a July morning in 2016 in Wichita - 71 years after she was built and roughly 60 years after being left in the desert - Doc took off. She rolled down the runway and lifted off clean, her four Wright radials roaring back to life over the city that had built her, with the volunteers who gave 15, 16, and 17 years of their lives watching from the ramp.

How Many B-29s Are Still Flying?

There are only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses left in the entire world, out of the nearly 4,000 Boeing built.

One is Fifi, kept flying for decades by the Commemorative Air Force. The other is Doc - the airplane that was written off, bombed, and left for dead.

Today, Doc’s Friends operate a hangar and education center in Wichita, and they take Doc on the road to airshows, where visitors can walk up to the aircraft, climb through her, and hear those engines run.

Key Takeaways

Doc is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress built in Wichita in spring 1945; she never saw combat and served instead in a radar calibration squadron named after the seven dwarfs.
She spent more than 40 years as a bombing target at China Lake, California, before being recovered in 1998 thanks to Tony Mazzolini.
Volunteers known as Doc’s Friends invested over 300,000 hours restoring her, fabricating unavailable parts from original Boeing drawings.
Doc flew again in July 2016, 71 years after she was built.
She is one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world, alongside Fifi of the Commemorative Air Force, out of nearly 4,000 built.