Memphis Belle undergoing painstaking restoration

MEMPHIS — It’s been a decade since the Memphis Belle left for the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and it probably won’t be ready for display until May 2018.

The Commercial Appeal reported the restoration work is slow-going, only because of the plane’s importance.

The famous B-17F Flying Fortress was named for pilot Robert Morgan’s fiancée, and its fame grew partly because of the romance behind the name. The Belle was one of the first B-17s to complete 25 missions over Nazi-occupied Germany and the subject of a 1944 movie.

After its final mission, the Belle returned to the U.S. for a national tour to help sell war bonds, but it later ended up at an Oklahoma air base, destined for the scrap heap until the city of Memphis bought it from the government for $350 in 1946.

The Belle was exhibited at several Memphis locations over the decades, but the Memphis Belle Memorial Association was never able to raise enough money to thoroughly restore and protect the plane. It had already been deeded to the Air Force museum many years earlier before the association decided to ask the museum to come and get it in 2005.

Once in Dayton, restoration began in earnest. It included stripping the paint, which uncovered thousands of names that had been scratched into the fuselage during the war-bond tour.

The museum aims to restore the Belle as closely as possible to its condition in May 1943, when the bomber completed its final mission. The painstaking process includes hand-stitching cotton onto the horizontal stabilizer and reproducing the specially designed metal fabric clips holding it to the frame.

“It’s the most important restoration of our generation, hands down,” museum curator Jeff Duford said.