Facelift for a f
ROMANCE BEHIND A G
IT was one of the most successful and stirring aircraft in history.
But for almost three quarters of a century the Memphis Belle was mothballed.
Now the Second World War flying fortress, which was immortalised in a Hollywood film, is back in the public eye after 55,000 hours of painstaking restoration work.
And it makes a fitting memorial to the 25,000 crew who were killed in combat and the 8,000 planes that were shot down.
The Belle was one of many thousands of B-17F heavy bombers that flew missions over Nazi-occupied Europe from British bases to help the Allies defeat Hitler.
Captain Robert K Morgan and his crew’s May 17, 1943 raid was the Memphis Belle’s record-breaking 25th – and its last in the war before it returned home to the US.
This month it finally went on permanent display at the National Museum of the US Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.
Capt Morgan’s son Robert Junior, who saw the restored plane unveiled, said: “It makes me so happy because this is what Dad wanted so desperately.
“He worked so hard with the Memphis Belle Memorial Association for so many years trying to preserve the plane. I wish that he could see it today.”
A 1944 documentary was made about the aircraft and crew with real footage from the war. A Hollywood flick called Memphis Belle starred Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz and Harry Connick Jr came out in 1990.
But the real story was less glamorous. The Belle stood decaying for decades exposed to the elements at the National Guard armoury in Memphis, Tennessee, while souvenir hunters snatched parts. T 2005 the Memphis Belle Mem Association bought the wreck and ha to Ohio’s Wright Patterson Air Force
It is now the centrepiece exhibit at t Air Force museum there.
Families and friends of the Memphi crew and other veterans from arou country gathered to watch its unve beside descendants of powered pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Museum curator Jeff Duford “During the war more than 25,000 US THE Memphis Belle was named in honour of a woman who its captain and chief pilot Robert K Morgan was in love with.
She was a resident of Memphis called Margaret Polk.
Robert first intended to call the aircraft Little One, which was his
Survive
pet name for her. But t co-pilot Jim Verinis saw Lady for a Night, in wh leading character own named the Memphis B
After that, Robert th Margaret as his Memp proposed the name to