Several pieces of a C-119 "Flying Boxcar" aircraft the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum purchased last year are on their way to Columbus and could arrive as early as tonight.
The 40,000-pound plane, which is not airworthy, has been taken apart at an airport in Greybull, Wyoming, where the aircraft’s tail booms, engines and other parts were then loaded on to a 26-foot box truck and a 53-foot flatbed semi truck, said Skip Taylor, a museum member who is leading the C-119 project.
Once in Columbus, the aircraft will be reassembled, restored and put on public display just south of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II aircraft now at the Columbus Municipal Airport.
Airport officials have cleaned out a 50-foot by 45-foot storage building connected to a hangar at the airport to store the first parts of the plane to arrive, said airport director Brian Payne.
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As of Thursday morning, drivers from Columbus-based Real World Testing, which donated a truck and two drivers for the project, had started the roughly 1,460 miles journey to Columbus but were still in Wyoming, said operations manager April Gray, adding that company officials are excited to see the aircraft when it arrives.
A snowstorm and slippery conditions in the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming on Wednesday delayed the trucks, Taylor said in a phone interview from South Dakota while on his way back to Columbus from Wyoming.
Museum officials hope to have the entire aircraft in Columbus later this month or early April, said Nick Firestone, Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum Board president.
"The engines and tail booms and some other miscellaneous parts are en route to Columbus as we speak," Firestone said. "The fuselage and wing box will be arriving either later this month or early next month."
The C-119, also known as the “Flying Boxcar” due to the unusual shape of its fuselage, was in service with the U.S. Air Force from 1947 to 1972 and was designed to carry cargo, personnel, litter patients and mechanized equipment. The aircraft was also used to drop cargo and troops using parachutes, according to the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum.
The aircraft, when assembled, is about 86-feet long, has a 110-foot wingspan and is 27-feet tall at the tail. The Flying Boxcars were powered by two Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone radial engines, each with 3,500 horsepower, and could reach a maximum speed of 296 miles per hour.
The U.S. Air Force extensively used C-119s during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
Retired C-119s were also used as air tankers to fight wildfires in the United States.
The particular C-119 purchased by the museum was built in Hagerstown, Maryland, for the Canadian Air Force, Taylor said. The aircraft was later acquired by Hawkins & Powers and used to fight forest fires. Its last known flight was in 1990.
The Flying Boxcars are of particular historical significance to Columbus, according to museum volunteers. Here, the pilots referred to them as the “Dollar Nineteens,” according to museum records.
From 1957 to 1969, 36 C-119s for the 434th Troop Carrier Wing were stationed at Bakalar Air Force Base, which is now Columbus Municipal Airport. The C-119s were a staple in Columbus, flown out of the base longer than any other aircraft.
Manufacturers Fairchild and Kaiser built 1,151 of the C-119s from 1949 to 1955. However, only about 40 Flying Boxcars are still left today, most of them in museums across the country or in a scrap yard, Firestone said in an earlier interview.
The Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum purchased the plane for $15,000 this past May.
That same month, the museum launched a crowdfunding campaign sponsored by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, and raised $50,034 to disassemble and transport the plane to Columbus, according to the campaign’s website.
The project also received a $50,000 matching grant from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority’s CreatINg Places program, the state’s crowdfunding grant program.
"It’s just a lot of things that we’re juggling that are up in the air," Firestone said. "The next thing I’ve got to do once I find out when these first two trucks get here is round up a few volunteers to help with the unloading.
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Visit atterburybakalarairmuseum.org/project-charlie-119.html for more information about the project.
People interesting in volunteering for the project should visit the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum, located at 4742 Ray Boll Blvd., and fill out a volunteer form.
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To view more photos of the transport of the C-119 to Columbus, visit therepublic.com.
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