One of the largest pieces of a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” purchased by the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum is arriving in Columbus today.
The fuselage of the 40,000-pound plane is arriving by truck to the Columbus Municipal Airport, within the next few hours, museum officials said. The plane was taken apart over the last few months at an airport in Greybull, Wyoming for transport by truck here.
The aircraft will be reassembled, restored and put on public display just south of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II aircraft now on display.
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, 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.
