Warbird Information Exchange

With a few coats of paint and some shiny new U.S. Air Force decals, the most visible airplane of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force was revamped in recent weeks.

The large, six-engine B-47 Stratojet bomber that sits just behind the Pooler museum’s memorial gardens and is highly visible from Interstate 95 had been in need of a face-lift for some time, said Perry Nuhn, a retired Air Force colonel and a docent at the museum.

Nuhn, who spent more than five years as a navigator/bombardier on a B-47 crew, believed refurbishing the plane was an opportunity to lure more people into the museum.

“It not only looked bad, but you had all these people coming by on the highway,” he said. “It’s an ambassador for the museum out

here where it is, and when it looks good, you have people saying, ‘Well, hey, look at that. Let’s go see what it is.’ It looks great now; they did a real nice job.”

The more than $20,000 renovation of the medium-size bomber’s exterior included new Air Force decals with unit insignia touting its Strategic Air Command, or SAC, the major Air Force and Defense Department command that was responsible for much of the U.S. nuclear mission during the Cold War.

More than 2,000 Boeing B-47s were produced between 1947 and 1956, and the majority fell under SAC’s umbrella — which included the 2nd, 8th and 15th Air Forces — and were primarily tasked with carrying Mark 6 nuclear bombs.

The mission, Nuhn said, was often daunting. Airmen assigned to B-47 crews spent weeks at a time on call. If they were summoned to a mission, they were expected to be in the air within about eight minutes.

Often, he said, the crew did not know until after takeoff whether they were being tested or whether they were on their way to drop a nuclear bomb on a target.

“The B-47 really carried the bulk of the Cold War,” said Nuhn, who served also served in the Korean and Vietnam wars and flew in A-26 and B-57 bombers. “It was armed with Mark 6s at all times, and it played a big role in limiting what the Russians might be willing to do.

“It could be stressful and terrible, but everyone with you was doing it too. You knew it was an important job that you had at that time.”

It could be an especially dangerous job, as well, Nuhn said.

More than 200 B-47s were lost to crashes.

Still, Nuhn said, with its swept-wing, multi-jet-engine design the B-47 was a major innovation among aircraft and it remains the direct ancestor of all modern commercial airliners.

The Mighty Eighth received its B-47, a training model used to train crews in Kansas and Florida, in 1998. The aircraft, one of five military planes on the museum’s grounds, is painted to represent the 303rd Bomb Group that was assigned to Molesworth Airbase in England.

“The B-47 is a beautiful aircraft,” said museum spokeswoman Christy Buechler. “And we are proud to have it welcoming our visitors and attracting passersby to the museum.”