Doc the B twenty-nine Superfortress and the sixteen-year restoration that defied the impossible

B-29 Superfortress serial number 44-69972, known as “Doc,” flew again on July 17, 2016, after a 16-year restoration by volunteers in Wichita, Kansas. Rescued from the Mojave Desert where she sat as a derelict naval weapons target, Doc became only the second flyable B-29 in the world, joining the Commemorative Air Force’s Fifi.

Why Does the B-29 Superfortress Matter?

The Boeing B-29 was the most complex and expensive weapon system of World War II — more costly than the Manhattan Project. It featured a pressurized crew cabin, remote-controlled gun turrets, and enough range to strike the Japanese home islands from bases in the Mariana chain. Boeing built over 3,700 B-29s, but by the early 1950s nearly all had been scrapped.

For decades, only one B-29 flew anywhere in the world: Fifi, maintained by the Commemorative Air Force in Texas. Parts were increasingly scarce, engines temperamental. If something happened to Fifi, no one would ever hear four Wright R-3350 radials turning in formation again.

How Was Doc Discovered?

In 1987, a man named Tony Mazzolini was working at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, California, deep in the Mojave Desert. The Navy had used the site as a test range since the 1940s, and dozens of old aircraft sat scattered across the landscape — targets, hulks, forgotten machines baking in the sun.

Mazzolini found a B-29 among them. She was riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel damage from use as a naval weapons target. Sand had stripped the paint. Tires were flat. Birds nested in the engine nacelles. By any reasonable measure, this airplane was finished.

Research revealed her history: serial number 44-69972 had rolled off Boeing’s Wichita assembly line in 1944, served with the 468th Bomb Group in the Pacific, and flew combat missions over Japan. After the war, she served various military roles before ending up at China Lake as a target drone director aircraft. Her wartime crew had named their planes after Snow White characters — this one got Doc.

How Long Did It Take to Get Permission to Save Her?

Mazzolini spent over a decade navigating military bureaucracy — writing letters, making phone calls, showing up at offices. In 1998, he finally received approval to remove Doc from China Lake.

Moving a 70,000-pound airplane with no working landing gear out of the desert was its own ordeal. She couldn’t fly, so teams loaded her onto flatbed trailers and hauled her overland to the old Boeing plant in Wichita. Bridges had to be checked for weight limits. Routes had to be surveyed for clearance. Doc arrived in Wichita in 2000.

What Did the Restoration Involve?

The scope was staggering. The fuselage was full of holes from battle damage, corrosion, and decades of desert exposure. Wings, control surfaces, hydraulics, electrical systems, pressurization, turrets — every system had to be rebuilt from scratch or fabricated new.

The workforce was largely retired Boeing employees from the Wichita plant, men and women in their sixties and seventies who volunteered their skills. They set up in a hangar and began disassembling Doc piece by piece.

Key numbers convey the scale:

The B-29’s wings contain over 55,000 rivets alone
Every pressurized skin panel had to be inspected, measured for thickness, and repaired or replaced
The forward pressurized cabin was essentially rebuilt from the ground up
Total restoration cost exceeded several million dollars, all from donations and fundraising

Some volunteers passed away during the restoration and never saw Doc fly. They showed up anyway, week after week, year after year.

How Were the Engines Restored?

The Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone — 18 cylinders in two rows of nine, producing roughly 2,200 horsepower each — was one of the war’s most notorious engines. The rear cylinder row received inadequate cooling, exhaust valves burned out frequently, and engine fires were the leading cause of B-29 losses during WWII, surpassing enemy action.

The Doc team had to locate four rebuildable engine cores from warehouses, barns, and warbird collections across the country. One came from a surplus dealer in Oklahoma; another from a museum storage facility. Each was completely torn down and every part inspected against original Boeing specifications. Cylinders were honed, crankshafts checked for cracks, magnetos rebuilt, carburetors overhauled. New wiring harnesses were fabricated by hand — no one manufactures R-3350 harnesses anymore.

The four Hamilton Standard propellers were a project within a project. Each has four blades with a constant-speed hydraulic pitch mechanism that hasn’t been manufactured since the Eisenhower administration. Teams tracked down overhaul specialists and sourced new-old-stock seals and bearings to restore each assembly to airworthy condition.

When Did Doc Fly Again?

Engine runs began in 2016. After taxi tests and high-speed runway runs at Wichita’s Eisenhower National Airport — checking controls, brakes, and engine temperatures — Doc took to the air on July 17, 2016.

Sixteen years of work. Thousands of volunteers. The second flyable B-29 climbed out over the Kansas prairie with four radials running, gear retracting into the nacelles, sunlight flashing off polished aluminum. It was the fulfillment of a promise Tony Mazzolini made in 1987 when he refused to let a shot-up hulk in the desert disappear.

Where Is Doc Now?

Doc tours the airshow circuit and has been reunited with Fifi for formation flights — two B-29s in the air together for the first time in decades. She is based at the B-29 Doc Hangar and Education Center in Wichita, Kansas, where visitors can walk up to her, look into the massive bomb bays, and see firsthand what volunteers refused to let become scrap metal.

Key Takeaways

Doc (B-29 serial number 44-69972) was rescued from the Mojave Desert in 1998 after Tony Mazzolini spent over a decade securing permission to save her
The restoration took 16 years, was performed largely by retired Boeing volunteers in Wichita, and cost several million dollars in donated funds
Every major system — engines, pressurization, hydraulics, electrical, control surfaces — was rebuilt from scratch or fabricated new
Doc flew again on July 17, 2016, becoming only the second airworthy B-29 Superfortress in the world alongside Fifi
She is now based at the B-29 Doc Hangar and Education Center in Wichita and tours airshows nationwide