March 11, 2007 Kansas Museum Needs Help To Move B-47 |
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By Russ Niles, Contributing Editor
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 The Kansas Aviation Museum says it needs a quick $110,000 or an army of well-equipped volunteers to bring a Cold War relic home. A B-47, the first swept-wing, pure jet bomber, is no longer welcome at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds, and the Kansas museum would like to bring it back to Wichita, where it was built in 1951. “It would be great to have the plane,” museum director Teresa Day told The Wichita Eagle. “It would definitely complement the B-29 and the B-52 we already have on display.” But Oklahoma City wants the aircraft, one of only 24 intact B-47s, gone by the end of April and will scrap it if necessary. “We have such a limited time frame, I’m just not sure it can happen,” Day said. For $110,000, a company will disassemble the aircraft, move it to Wichita and put it back together but, as with most museums, that $110,000 just isn’t there. The alternative would be to find enough volunteers with the skill and equipment to bring the nuclear bomber home. Day says they’ll need a crane to lift the 110-foot-long plane from its current pedestal and a minimum of five flatbeds to carry the pieces. “It’s a long shot,” Day said. “I’ve contacted past friends of the museum to ask for help. It would be a shame for this plane to be lost.”
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