By Andrew WestDOVER — In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Air Mobility Command Museum on Friday, we’re sharing some photos of an old Dover Air Force Base friend, Shoo Shoo Baby.
Some of those attending festivities this weekend at the base may take a sentimental journey back to 1978, when the World War II-era bomber arrived in pieces.
It took 10 years, but a band of reservists reassembled it and gave it a fresh coat of paint before it was sent to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
What still remains unbelievable is that it was flown there Sept. 10, 1988.
The project to rebuild the plane began as an effort to publicize the Air Force Reserve and build some enthusiasm among the ranks.
The national museum shoo-ed Shoo Shoo Baby into storage in 2018, after it welcomed the Memphis Belle, the famed B-17F bomber that was the first from World War II to complete 25 missions.
Today, Shoo Shoo Baby is resting, in pieces, at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Fairfax, Virginia. It will be reassembled and placed in the World War II collection there after an expansion project is completed in 2028.
In 2023, it was taken apart and shipped in a C-5 to Udvar-Hazy.
In a quiet corner on the first floor, you can see Shoo Shoo, with its Vargas girl looking over her shoulder, next to the words, “Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby.”
The Andrews Sisters’ song inspired the name.
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For the 30th anniversary of the museum, the Daily State News put together a special section, which had a lengthy feature on Shoo Shoo Baby.
The story’s opening lines:
For 10 years, volunteers from the 512th Airlift Wing worked on Shoo Shoo Baby.
She came to them with broken wings and parts and pieces tossed into 27 crates that had spent the previous six years in Dayton, Ohio, and more than a decade before that in a field in Creil, France.
The once shiny bomber with the blonde and Andrews Sisters’ song title on its nose came back to the states with little dignity.
After 24 missions, it had been forced to land in Sweden where it went on to fly as a passenger plane and later as a surveying craft for a French company.
An Australian B-17 researcher had located it and informed the U.S. Air Force of its whereabouts.
Its original pilot, Paul G. McDuffee, had longed to see it again. He got his wish in 1972 when a C-5 cargo plane brought it to Dayton, Ohio, home of the National Museum of the Air Force.
France, in a gesture of goodwill, sold it back to the U.S. for a franc.
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Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Emmett Venett Jr., who led the 512th during Shoo Shoo Baby’s restoration, sent a letter to the editor in May after the passing of lead mechanic Master Sgt. Raymond McCloskey,
“The effort to restore this aircraft had been taken on by the 512th Airlift Wing as a community action project, to help involve the public and the Air Force in initiatives that would enhance goodwill and enable the Reserve wing to recruit,” Venett wrote. “It was a tremendous undertaking that involved the whole base, as well as the public, and brought national attention to the project.
“There were many Air Force members who contributed to the success of the monumental restoration of this airplane, but one who got little credit — and yet without whom this project could not have succeeded — just passed away.”
McCloskey, who lived in Camden, was 84.
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The 30th-anniversary section is available in the Special Sections Showcase at baytobaynews.com.
