Museum’s Volunteer Restoration Team Brings History to Life

(Photo above: The museum’s Fairchild 24 in 1945 | Copyright Jacob Burkart | MT.Health | Airport-Data.com)

If the heart of the collection at the Southern Museum of Flight is our planes, then its soul is the team of volunteers who lovingly restore them. Many museum favorites—such as the Huff-Daland crop duster, the Korean War diorama featuring an F-86 Sabre and a MIG-15, and the trifecta of trainers in our Tuskegee Airmen exhibit—only exist because of the skill and dedication of our volunteers. In 2025 they have been hard at work on three more projects, each of which when finished will be an amazing addition to the museum.

The project that is closest to completion is a display featuring a Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engine. The R-3350 powered some aircraft during World War II but really came into its own after the war when engineers designed an upgrade that brought piston engines to the pinnacle of their performance in the 1950s before being replaced by jets in the 1960s.

The museum’s exhibit—headed up by volunteer Chris Kidd—is a restored and motorized cutaway R-3350 that will reveal the inner workings of the engine as well as its innovative turbo combine that dramatically increased power without increasing fuel consumption. This version of the engine was used on the Lockheed Super Constellation and made possible intercontinental commercial flights from North America to Europe without stops in Newfoundland or Iceland. Look for this exhibit to be unveiled during the first half of 2026.

Another group of volunteers has been working on an ultra-rare Fairchild 24C-8B, affectionately known in the restoration shed as the F-24. Fairchild built Model 24s from 1932 to 1946; ours (S/N 2006, N13111) is from the very first year they were built. Manufactured in Hagerstown, Maryland, this aircraft is—we believe—one of only two remaining from that year. N13111 last flew in the 1960s, towing banners in New Jersey.

The restoration team has done an incredible job bringing this beauty back to life. Volunteers cleaned and repaired the fuselage’s metal tubing and the wooden wings and fabricated a few parts, such as the tail fin, that were beyond repair. All that’s left is to cover the aircraft. The museum’s plan for N13111 is to leave one wing uncovered in order to reveal its inner structure (and to show off the craftmanship of the restoration team!). Stay tuned for more updates on the Fairchild 24 as it moves toward completion and display.

The museum’s longest running restoration project—probably the largest in the history of the museum—is an effort to rehabilitate a B-25 Mitchell. Aircraft aficionados will tell you that any B-25 is worthy of display. But the Southern Museum of Flight’s B-25 is unique since it is the only one left that was flown by a unit of Tuskegee Airmen.

This was the 477^th Bombardment Group. They were slated to finish training in August 1945, so they didn’t deploy before the war ended. About one hundred of the unit’s officers were arrested and court-martialed for attempting to enter an illegally segregated officers’ club at Freeman Field in Indiana in the spring of 1945, an effort that became memorialized as the Freeman Field “Mutiny.” While the convictions were later vacated, the event became a major source of inspiration for the post-war Civil Rights Movement.

Our plane was built as a B-25J by North American Aviation in Kansas City, Kansas, in February 1945. It was converted in 1954 at the Birmingham Modification Center into a TB-25N to be used for navigator training. It last served at Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul, Illinois, where it was dropped from inventory in 1958. The plane was then displayed at a museum on the grounds of the base. The Southern Museum of Flight acquired the aircraft from the museum when it closed in 2015.

Several parts of the aircraft were quickly made available for viewing. You can see the nose and cockpit, two engines, a propeller, and the tail in the museum’s South Hangar. But work continues on the rest of the aircraft back in the restoration shed. The right wing and part of the central fuselage are finished, and volunteers are now working on the left wing. The team is not only restoring the plane’s aluminum skin and supporting structures but also much of the aircraft’s “guts,” some of which will be made viewable. Some of what is already on display, including the plexiglass sections of the nose, will be touched up before the project is over. Don’t worry: you won’t be able to miss the announcement when we’re ready to unveil our Tuskegee Airmen B-25!

With all three projects, the museum’s volunteers are helping ensure that rare aircraft and powerful stories endure, reinforcing the Southern Museum of Flight’s mission to keep aviation history alive for future generations. While the R-3350, Fairchild 24, and the Tuskegee B-25 aren’t quite ready to be exhibited yet, stop by the museum soon and see for yourself the extraordinary craftsmanship already on display. And you might get a chance to thank one of our volunteers yourself!