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Doc's Updates

 




"Doc" was transferred from the Air Force to China Lake 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."


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"

The fuselage . . .

 

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Boeing's B-29 Superfortress Takes to the Sky Again