Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum volunteers are awaiting the arrival of a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” aircraft the museum purchased last year, with some pieces the plane — including the vertical tail, engines and wheels — expected to arrive in Columbus during the first week of March.
The 40,000-pound plane, which is not airworthy, is being taken apart at an airport in Greybull, Wyoming, where it will be loaded on to four trucks and driven some 1,460 miles to Columbus, said Nick Firestone, Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum Board president.
Once in Columbus, the aircraft will be reassembled, restored and put on public display on the west side of Bakalar Green, along Ray Boll Boulevard, just south of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II aircraft now on display.
Museum officials said they hope to have the entire aircraft in Columbus by the end of April but “probably have several years worth of restoration to do,” said Skip Taylor, a museum member who is leading the C-119 project.
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“They pulled it into a hangar and started taking it apart in December,” Taylor said. “Around New Year’s (Day), they had the plane to where it was down to the fuselage and wing box. They even took the wheels off. The gears have been retracted and it’s laying on its belly. They are now separating the wing box from the fuselage and that is last major work to be done before transportation.”
The museum hired the aircraft’s former owner, B&G Industries, which does airplane frame work and performs other services, to take the aircraft apart, Taylor said.
The fuselage, which is 13-feet tall and 11.5-feet wide and weighs around 10,000 pounds, will be wrapped in protective material and loaded onto a lowboy trailer and transported to Columbus.
The wing box, looking from above, is around 38-feet long and 21-feet wide, also will be wrapped in protective material and loaded onto a lowboy trailer. The wing box is a centralized part of the plane, which Taylor described as its “spinal column,” that connects to several key parts of the aircraft, including the wings, fuselage, among others.
The rest of the plane will be loaded onto a 26-foot box truck and a 53-foot flatbed semi truck, Taylor said.
“The plan is right now is to have the fuselage and wing box separated by the end of March and right when that’s done have people go out and get it, and ideally, we’ll have it here in April,” Taylor said.
Once in Columbus, museum officials, as well as a group of volunteers and representatives from other organizations, plan to start reassembling the plane in a hangar at Columbus Municipal Airport, Taylor said. Though the plane won’t be fully restored, museum officials expect offer the public the chance to view the aircraft starting in May.
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 around 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.
“This aircraft is just so historically significant for this airfield,” Taylor said.
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.
“Primarily, the fundraising project was to take care of the expenses involved in Phase 1 of this project,” Firestone said. “We’ve broke it down into three phases. Phase 1 is acquiring the plane and its disassembly and transfer to Columbus. Phase 2 encompasses the reassembly and restoration of the aircraft, and Phase 3 is site preparation and positioning the aircraft for display on the site across from the museum.”
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The C-119 purchased by the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum is being taken apart at an airport in Greybull, Wyoming. Some pieces the plane — including the vertical tale, engines and six wheels — are expected to arrive in Columbus during the first week of March, said officials at the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum
The fuselage and wing box will be wrapped in protective material and loaded onto a lowboy trailer and transported to Columbus. The rest of the plane will be loaded onto a 26-foot box truck and a 53-foot flatbed semi-truck.
Museum officials expect to have the entire aircraft in Columbus by the end of April.
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To learn more about the C-119 aircraft being brought to Columbus, visit atterburybakalarairmuseum.org/project-charlie-119.html.
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