Sipsey Street Irregulars: Famed ‘Memphis Belle’ undergoes painstaking restoration

Monday, December 14, 2015

Famed ‘Memphis Belle’ undergoes painstaking restoration

In 1987, a canopied exhibit site funded through public donations was dedicated on Mud Island, where the plane remained until being moved to a former Navy facility in Millington in 2003.

Rosey and I attended the dedication and, more importantly, the fly-in at West Memphis airport, when all of the B-17s still airworthy (9 of them if I recall correctly) came in and then went out to fly in formation in a salute over Mud Island. The throaty roar of all those Wright Cyclone engines was something to experience.

5 comments:

Unknown said...: the only B17s extant, that ever saw wartime (combat) service, are all at the national museum of the us air force, dayton,ohio. swoose(B17D),memphis belle(B17E) and shoo shoo baby(B17G).
this according to the museum, tho, I know there are B17E models in existence, so is the museum correct?
when memphis and swoose are finished, shoo shoo will depart and go back to the smithsonian.
I bet when that occurs, there will be a big photo shoot of all three in line up.
moving planes in and out is always a big deal.
then the shoo shoo will fly away, probably forever.
I remember years ago when shoo shoo flew into dayton.; December 14, 2015 at 11:26 AM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the update on the Belle it is a real icon Battlefield survivor and saved by the public

just about the only E model left IIRC

I don't know what version the Sho-Sho Baby is; December 14, 2015 at 10:35 PM
Allen said...: wait..millington is a "former" naval facility?

when the hell did that happen? damn I was there only...DAMMIT!

that was 25 years ago. damn. I suppose a lot can happen in 25 years.

I wonder what they're doing with it now.; December 15, 2015 at 12:59 AM
Anonymous said...: In the mid 50's the Miami area had one of several Med-fly infestations which was dealt with by early morning and late evening spraying of malathion laced bait. The spraying was done with converted B-17 and B-24 aircraft. I remember those planes making repeated tree-top passes and the thunder of those engines. Many years later we were able to tour a B-17 named "Aluminum Overcast" at an airshow held at Opa-Locka airport.

As the aircraft and men who flew them dwindle in number its important that we remember what they did and how they shaped our current world for the better.; December 15, 2015 at 3:42 AM
Anonymous said...: was our own "Sally B" there?; December 15, 2015 at 3:58 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, December 14, 2015

Famed ‘Memphis Belle’ undergoes painstaking restoration

5 comments:

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