Thsi doesn’t look good…
Local museum faces challenges, loss of airplanes
Hangar for older airplanes could cost $30 million or more
By John Andrew Prime
[email]jprime@gannett.com[/email]Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brett Dula was a mere colonel at Barksdale Air Force Base when he commanded the 2nd Bomb Wing.
However, those who know him remember that one of his proudest days was when he saw a derelict B-29 bomber emerge from the belly of a C-5 Galaxy transport, to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of neglect to blossom in the museum’s air park.
That World War II bomber is an airplane a report from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force says should stay at Barksdale, a scant counter to the possible loss of its B-17 and the B-24. Following an unsatisfactory inspection and failing to gain initial accreditation by its national parent museum, the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale is working to avoid losing its signature air park.
One day local visitors could awake to find more than half its airplanes gone. The valuable older airplanes taken to Ohio and others, such as the British Vulcan bomber the Royal Air Force specifically gave to the local base, scrapped.
The B-24 bomber is associated with the base’s greatest glory of World War II, serving as training site for many B-24 crews that eventually flew one of World War II’s greatest and deadliest missions, the August 1943 attack on Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti. More than 700 airmen lost their lives in that mission, and five Medals of Honor were awarded, the most ever for a single combat exploit. One Medal of Honor went to a Shreveporter, Col. John Riley “Killer” Kane, son of prominent local Baptist minister John Franklin Kane. The loss of the B-24 would sever one of the few remaining links between the base, Kane and the Ploesti mission that helped define long-range strategic bombing.
Dula almost seemed like a proud father as he watched his magnesium-alloy baby plop onto the Barksdale tarmac, but he recognizes the hurdles the local museum faces.
“I wish the wing well in their attempts to bolster the museum but the cumulative effects of 30-plus years of inattention and insufficient manpower are evident in the pretty graphic photos the inspection team took,” said Dula, now retired to Austin, Texas. He occasionally visits the area for family reasons and keeps tabs on the museum and the museum’s founding curator and current director, Harold D. “Buck” Rigg, an old friend.
The base museum here faces challenges from leaner, meaner competitors out to get patrons, visitors and collections.
“Visit Pensacola, Omaha, Wright-Patterson, Dallas, Seattle or any number of first-class aviation museums and you’ll quickly surmise this: To have a decent aviation museum, the airplanes must be located inside climate-controlled buildings and the aircraft have to be restored, not just parked there,” Dula said.
About a dozen members of the 8th Air Force Museum Association met at the museum on base Thursday to further plans to correct deficiencies noted in the report from the parent museum, which declined to grant accreditation, in a first round of such inspections by the museum system.
The local museum is not alone in being faulted by observers both inside and outside the Air Force Museum system.
An editorial in the current issue of the prestigious aviation magazine “Warbird Digest” takes the whole museum system to task for arbitrarily refusing to certify aircraft for restoration and refurbishment by the private Commemorative Air Force and other recognized air preservation groups, and for neglecting displays at museums under its review.
Noting the museum system’s refusal to certify a rare F-82, a twin-fuselaged version of the famed Mustang fighter, editor Tim Savage wondered just what the system planned to do with the airplane once it had it.
By: Bruce - 25th January 2009 at 21:02
check the date of the first post….
By: Firebird - 25th January 2009 at 15:56
This isn’t exactly new news, this story broke on WIX back in November last year.
By: GrahamSimons - 25th January 2009 at 15:23
I think you will find it’s not the fault of this Museum, but ‘those higher up!’
By: Peter - 25th January 2009 at 14:26
Once again externally t does not look like a wreck waiting to be scrapped. This will certainly put a black mark on the US if it happens.
For what it’s worth how about an E letter writing campaign??
Talk to Us
8th Air Force Museum Association
P.O. Box 75
Barksdale AFB, LA. 71110-0075
8th Air Force Museum Association Gift Shop
(318) 752-0055
E-mail us at [email]info@8afmuseum.com[/email]
By: Jagx204 - 25th January 2009 at 09:36
Still not looking like good news
Just seen this local paper report posted on another forum, not looking hopefull 🙁
British bomber may soon be relic of the past
Historic Vulcan not on list to keep at base
By John Andrew Prime • [email]jprime@gannett.com[/email] • January 24, 2009 2:00 amA bat-winged British Vulcan bomber, a rare display at the 8th Air Force
Museum at Barksdale Air Force Base, could be destroyed if efforts to improve
the museum fall short.The bomber, a gift from Her Majesty’s Government to the Air Force in 1983,
is not among those slated to be kept if the local museum, now in its 30th
year, fails to pass a pending review. The museum failed an initial
accreditation by the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, its parent body,
in 2007 and will face a repeat inspection, possibly later this year.
“We’re not going to lose them,” said Lt. Col. Bob Fournier, 2nd Bomb Wing
Director of Staff, who has attended 8th Air Force Museum Association
meetings, closely overseeing work to improve the facility. He noted
improvement to the building and airplanes at its air park. “They just get
better and better.”
Col. Robert Wheeler, 2nd Bomb Wing commander, stressed the important lessons
the museum can convey.
“This part of history that 8th Air Force (Museum) provides is a huge piece
of what we teach our young folks, and our folks that are even older, to not
make the same mistakes of the past,” he said. And, he added, it is “an
opportunity for those young kids … to see through (veterans’) eyes, to get
that twinkle going, for their dreams for the future,”
The British Mark II Vulcan bomber was one of a trio of “V Class” bombers
that ruled the skies over the United Kingdom for close to 30 years. With its
sibling airplanes the Valiant and the Victor, and with its U.S. cousins, the
B-47, B-52 and B-58 bombers, the Vulcan helped form a protective nuclear
shield throughout the Cold War.
In May 1982, several of the aircraft flew an epic 13,000-mile mission to
bomb the Port Stanley runway on the Falkland Islands, which had been
occupied by Argentina earlier that year. It was the longest aerial combat
mission in history until January 1991, when seven B-52s from Barksdale
opened Operation Desert Storm with a nonstop mission to and from the Middle
East, a mission now known as Operation SECRET SQUIRREL.
The plane at Barksdale was delivered by then Vice Air Marshal Michael Knight
and a select crew on June 9, 1982, just a few months after the Falklands
mission. Knight later became the British equivalent of the chief of staff of
the U.S. Air Force.
The gift to Barksdale marked the close association between the U.S. 8th Air
Force and the Royal Air Force, which dates back to World War II and
continues to this day with a British liaison officer resident at the local
base, which is home to 8th Air Force headquarters.
Fans of the James Bond movies may remember the Vulcan as the British bomber
that was hijacked in “Thunderball.”
“I think it’s a travesty and I think (the British) would consider it a
travesty,” said local historian and military author Gary Joiner, an
Anglophile who received doctorates from Her Royal Highness Princess
Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, at St. Martin’s College, Lancaster
University.
The Vulcan at the museum took part in several “Bomb Comp” events at
Barksdale and also flew in air shows.
“I was at the base when it flew in and did its aerial demonstration and made
every eye pop,” Joiner said. Its wanton destruction “would be an affront to
the crown and the people of Great Britain.”
That was echoed by a Briton, John D. Richards, 61.
“I personally think it is sad that the United Kingdom, having given the USA
a present of the Vulcan, that they … are now planning to destroy it,” he
wrote. “I personally feel this to be a slur on our country. The fact that,
of all the Vulcan B2s built, this one is the only one I never saw flying has
nothing to do with it. “
However, its destruction is not a given. The 2nd Bomb Wing must request the
review after it has had a chance to revamp the museum, and it is working
hard to do so. The museum’s physical plant has been cleaned, a workshop has
been added, a fenced yard is now available for refurbishment of airplanes
and volunteers have been cleaning and restoring the Vulcan, B-52s and other
aircraft.
“Here at the Air Combat Command History Office, we still have hopes that the
Barksdale museum will be able to pull it together and give their static
display aircraft proper care,” said David Bragg, staff curator with ACC
headquarters at Langley Air Force Base, Va. “I am not aware of any immediate
plans to take any of their aircraft away, although I can see it happening
unless the aircraft get proper care real soon. The National Museum will not
let the aircraft rot away when there is a better solution.”
As for the fate of the Vulcan, he said, “the British Government probably
would not be consulted. When they gave the aircraft to the Barksdale museum,
in actuality they were giving an unconditional gift to the U.S. Air Force.
But again, if the aircraft is being properly cared for there will be no
justification for moving it.”
Spokesmen for the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, also say the loss is not a given, although
the Vulcan is on their 2007 report as one of about half the display aircraft
at Barksdale to be deactivated.
That “was one recommendation but the final decisions will be made by the ACC
historian,” wrote National Museum spokesman Rob Bardua.
By: Peter - 26th November 2008 at 14:44
This doesnt appear to be a badly corroded Vulcan according to these pictures..?
http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/bill_spidle2/avro_vulcan_b2_xm606/index.php?Page=1
By: J Boyle - 26th November 2008 at 14:35
If the Vulcan is scrapped, I’d guess it would be because of corrosion…Louisiana isn’t immune to it..as opposed to the much drier conditions a few hundred miles west in West Texas or of course, Arizona.
I don’t think the Vulcan design lends itself to pulling the wings off and trucking it to Tucson…does it?
By: Peter - 26th November 2008 at 14:35
I hope not as that would be a total shame! How would that work if it was a gift from Her majesty service?
By: Nashio966 - 26th November 2008 at 11:19
hmm, im not quite sure that its going to be scrapped just yet, perhaps more of a possibility if things dont brighten up?
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November 26, 2008 at 6:34 am