Doc, the B-29 Superfortress They Pulled Off a Desert Bombing Range and Fifteen Years Later Flew Home to Wichita

The B-29 Superfortress named Doc spent roughly 40 years as a bombing-range target in California’s Mojave Desert before a group of volunteers recovered her, hauled her home to Wichita, Kansas, and spent about 15 years rebuilding her. She flew again in the summer of 2016 and is now one of only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses in the world, alongside the aircraft known as FIFI. Her story is one of the largest and most complex flying restorations ever completed.

What Was the B-29 Superfortress?

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the most advanced aircraft of the Second World War. It featured a pressurized cabin so crews could operate at high altitude without freezing or gasping for air, and remote-controlled gun turrets aimed by an early analog computer.

Power came from four Wright R-3350 engines, each producing more than 2,000 horsepower. The airplane was enormous: 99 feet long with a 141-foot wingspan. Boeing spent more money developing the B-29 than the United States spent building the atomic bomb.

Those engines were also notoriously temperamental. The Wright R-3350 ran hot, and early in the war the B-29 killed more crews through accidents and engine fires than the enemy did. But when the aircraft worked, it flew higher, farther, and carried more than anything else in the sky.

How Did Doc End Up as a Target in the Desert?

After the war, the Air Force had thousands of B-29s and no war to fly them in. Some went to Korea, most went to storage, and a batch were assigned a grim job: they became targets.

At the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake in the Mojave, the Navy needed large, airplane-shaped objects to shoot at while testing weapons and calibrating sensors. Retired B-29s were towed onto the range and lined up in the sand.

Doc was delivered in 1944 and served after the war as a radar calibration and training ship. A crew chief had painted a cartoon on her nose - one of the Seven Dwarfs - because aircraft in her squadron were named for the Snow White characters. This one was Doc, parked alongside sisters named Sneezy and Grumpy.

For years, the desert worked to erase her. Sand filled the engines, the sun cooked the paint to bare metal, birds nested in the wings, and the tires rotted flat.

Who Rescued Doc, and How Long Did It Take?

In 1987, a former Air Force man and B-29 enthusiast named Tony Mazzolini went looking for a Superfortress that could fly again. At the time only one B-29 was airworthy - FIFI, operated by the Commemorative Air Force - and Mazzolini wanted a second.

His search led him to the China Lake range, where he found Doc. This was not a barn find. The aluminum was corroded, the wiring was rotted or gone, instruments were smashed or stolen, and snakes and scorpions had moved into the crew stations. Most people saw scrap. Mazzolini saw an aircraft that still had her bones.

Getting Doc off a live bombing range took years of paperwork, because the aircraft belonged to the government, the land belonged to the Navy, and environmental rules applied. The recovery did not happen until 1998 - more than a decade after Mazzolini first saw her.

A crew went into the Mojave, partially disassembled Doc in the heat, and trucked the pieces out. Eventually she came home to Wichita, Kansas.

Why Does Wichita Matter to Doc’s Story?

Wichita is where Doc was built. Boeing produced thousands of B-29s there during the war, on assembly lines staffed largely by women while the men were overseas. When Doc arrived in Wichita on flatbed trucks, she was returning to the town that made her.

The restoration became a volunteer effort carried out by a group that called themselves Doc’s Friends. The crew included retired Boeing engineers, old mechanics, airline pilots, and young people who wanted to learn. Some volunteers were the very people who had built B-29s in Wichita decades earlier - including women who had riveted Superfortress wings in the 1940s, now teaching the technique to volunteers in their twenties.

What Did the Restoration Actually Involve?

The scale was staggering. Every one of the four Wright R-3350 engines - each an 18-cylinder, two-row radial - had to be torn down and rebuilt to perfection, because a B-29 engine that isn’t perfect catches fire.

Thousands of parts had to be found, fabricated from scratch, or reverse-engineered from drawings. The team installed miles of new wiring, cut out and replaced corroded skin panels, and recreated systems that hadn’t been manufactured in generations.

They did it slowly, correctly, and on a shoestring, funded by donations and whatever a group of retirees could raise. The work stretched across about 15 years. Some volunteers started on the aircraft and did not live to see her fly. There were stretches where the money ran dry and the project nearly ended on the hangar floor.

When Did Doc Fly Again?

On a summer day in 2016, in Wichita, the team rolled Doc onto the ramp, started all four Wright engines, and she flew.

A B-29 does not sound like a modern airplane. Four 18-cylinder radials at full power produce a low, thundering roar that Wichita had not heard overhead in half a century. Old-timers stood on the ramp with tears on their faces as the town that built her heard her come alive again.

Doc earned her airworthiness certificate and became one of only two flying B-29 Superfortresses on the planet, out of nearly 4,000 built. She now travels to airshows, offers ride flights, and stops in towns so people can walk up and touch the aluminum. A dedicated education center - the B-29 Doc History and Education Center - was built around her in Wichita.

Why This Restoration Matters

These aircraft are disappearing - to corrosion, to the scrapper’s torch, and to the simple reality that the people who built and flew them are passing away. When the last of them goes, their knowledge goes too, unless someone captures it and passes it on.

That is what a restoration really preserves. It looks like a project about metal, but it is about knowledge. When retired Boeing hands taught young volunteers how to rivet a wing skin the wartime way, and how to make a dead R-3350 run reliably, that expertise was saved. Doc is a flying classroom where the old methods survive because young hands learned them from old hands - and living proof that even an aircraft used for target practice can fly again and matter.

Key Takeaways

• Doc is a B-29 Superfortress delivered in 1944, later used as a bombing-range target at China Lake for roughly 40 years.
• Tony Mazzolini located the aircraft in 1987, but recovery from the range did not happen until 1998.
• The restoration was carried out in Wichita, Kansas - Doc’s birthplace - by volunteers known as Doc’s Friends over about 15 years.
• Doc flew again in 2016 and is now one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world, alongside FIFI, out of nearly 4,000 built.
• The project preserved not just an aircraft but the hands-on knowledge of building and operating the Superfortress, now taught through a dedicated education center in Wichita.