The World War II B-25 bomber "Martha Jean" sits in a hangar at Jones Riverside Airport on Friday. ADAM WISNESKI/Tulsa World
A collector has sold his World War II-vintage airplane to an aviation museum in Ohio. By D.R. STEWART World Staff Writer
David Wheaton won't be attending the Doolittle Raiders' 69th anniversary reunion this weekend in Omaha, Neb.
Although he has attended five of the reunions during the past 10 years, Wheaton recently sold his B-25 Mitchell bomber - Martha Jean - that he flew to several of the Doolittle Raider events.
"No, I'm not going this year," Wheaton said. "I sold the airplane a couple of months ago. I'm keeping the aircraft for the new buyer."
The buyer, which paid between $500,000 and $1 million, Wheaton said, is the Liberty Aviation Museum in Port Clinton, Ohio.
Wheaton, a retired accountant, keeps the B-25, a 1943 Stearman PT-17 biplane trainer and a Piper Malibu single-engine six-seater at a private hangar at Jones Riverside Airport.
After he hands off the B-25 to the museum, he will move to a smaller hangar on the south end of Jones Riverside.
"I'm going from 16,000 square feet to 9,000," Wheaton said. "If you don't have the big girl, you don't need a big box anymore."
An earlier version of Wheaton's "big girl," which is a 1945 B-25, was flown 69 years ago this month by 16 air crews under the command of Lt. Col. James "Jimmy" Doolittle in World War II.
Disheartened by the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and additional military setbacks in the Pacific, U.S. leaders decided the country needed a decisive military strike to boost morale.
Their solution was a daylight bombing attack on Tokyo and other Japanese cities - flown from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles east of Japan.
It was the first time a bomber had flown a combat mission off the deck of an aircraft carrier, and it was a feat many thought was impossible.
The 80 men chosen by Doolittle were all volunteers who were told they would be part of a secret, dangerous mission from which many of them would not return, military historians and newspaper accounts say.
The Doolittle Raiders practiced short takeoffs with their weight-stripped bombers for months.
On April 18, 1942, they launched their planes from the USS Hornet and flew nearly at treetop level before delivering their bomb loads, dodging anti-aircraft fire, running out of fuel and crash-landing in China.
Most of the Doolittle Raiders did survive with the help of Chinese villagers who hid and transported them to safety. The Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese villagers in retaliation.
Wheaton bought Martha Jean 11 years ago after growing up around airplanes, fixing them and admiring those who flew them. He doesn't know who Martha Jean was named for but guesses it is a girlfriend, wife or mother of one of the previous seven owners.
"My dad was a World War II Army Air Force mechanic," Wheaton said.
"He always had an old wrecked airplane in the garage. He was always rebuilding something, and by the time he got it finished, he couldn't afford to keep it."
Wheaton grew to appreciate the World War II-vintage airplanes, designed by people like his father who worked with slide rules rather than computers, and built the planes like tanks.
"They made them stout," Wheaton said. "Here it is, 65 years later, with 10,000 hours on the airframe. It was probably meant for 200 hours of combat.
"I just like history, knowing you're flying something that real heroes flew back in the day. It's a memorial to the people who designed it, built it and crewed the airplane. It was a huge effort on everybody's part - not just the crews."
Some years ago, when the Doolittle Raiders convened in Tucson, Ariz., for one of their annual reunions, the city gave each of the crew members a silver goblet with each of their names engraved twice: once at the top and a second engraving upside down at the bottom, Wheaton said.
At each reunion, the Raiders toast each other with "refreshments" from the silver goblets. The toasts include salutes to those Raiders who have died since the last reunion, he said.
The deceased Raiders' goblets are turned upside down and returned to a wooden and glass carrying case, where the names can be read with the others.
In his B-25, Wheaton flew the goblets from where they were stored at the Air Force Academy to the Doolittle Raiders' reunion at Travis Air Force Base in Vacaville, Calif., in 2003.
In 2004, he flew the goblets from the Air Force Academy to the reunion in Tucson.
"You're flying along, and you can't believe what's in the back," Wheaton said.
In recent years, the Air Force brass decided the Doolittle goblets should be kept at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
Wheaton offered to fly the goblets from the Air Force Academy to Wright-Patterson.
"It would have cost me $25,000 out of my own pocket - the Raiders wanted it that way," Wheaton said. "But the bureaucracy took over and they had a C-5 (cargo jet, the largest plane in North America) carry them back.
"That's the way it is today. People are afraid of everything."
B-25 Mitchell bomber Manufacturer: North American Aircraft Corp., Kansas City, Mo. (Modifications throughout World War II at Air Force Plant No. 3, Tulsa.) Number manufactured: 9,816. Number still flying in 2011: 25 (estimated). Length: 52 feet, 11 inches. Wingspan: 67 feet, 7 inches. Height: 15 feet, 9 inches. Empty weight: 20,300 pounds. Maximum takeoff weight: 34,000 pounds. Maximum bomb load: 3,000 pounds. Engines: Two Wright Cyclone R-2600 air-cooled piston engines delivering 1,700 horsepower each. Maximum range: 1,350 miles. Service ceiling: 24,196 feet. Claim to fame: Flown by Doolittle Raiders off U.S. aircraft carrier Hornet to bomb Japan on April 18, 1942.
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