"Doc" was transferred from the Air Force to ChinaLake on Oct. 15, 1956 to be used as a ballistic target for air combat training. It was one of 50 to be used for that purpose.
Four times over the decades, "Doc" was used as a sitting target; four times, missiles missed. Then the Navy fed its mothballed B-29s to the shredder. "Doc", tucked away on the test range, was spared.
By the late 1980s, the Navy agreed to give up Doc, but only if Tony found a B-25 -- another World War II plane -- and restored it for a Naval museum in Florida. That brought a whole different set of hassles.
Tony says, "the desire became an obsession." He struck out on his own, located a B-25 in Venezuela, tore it down, shipped it to Cleveland, put it back together and restored it to the Navy's specifications. The project took six years and cost a quarter of a million dollars. By 1998, the Navy traded its B-29 for Mr. Mazzolini's newly restored B-25.
The Navy came to admire Mr. Mazzolini's perseverance. "He was incredibly patient and persistent," says Steven Boster, director of public affairs at China Lake. "Most people would have given up long before he did," says Mr. Boster. "But he kept at it. He fought off a number of people who wanted that aircraft."
On the Way Home
Here are some photos of "Doc" on her way back home to Wichita, KS and Boeing.
Convoy of trucks about 7 miles from Wichita
The engines head for "home"
Fifty-six years after it rolled out of the Boeing factory in Wichita, Kan., "Doc" arrived home badly needing "medical attention."
The battered forward fuselage section, wings, engines and other major part of the Superfortress, one of the last restorable B-29s known to exist, is home for restoration.
In June 2000, the airplane arrived on flatbed semitrailers and rolled through Boeing Wichita's Gate 5, completing one journey, and poised to begin another. Hundreds of employees and retirees turned out to greet the piece of history. Many of them signed on to help restore it - a massive volunteer effort to put the airplane back in flying form.
