A few weekends ago we completed the 5+-year restoration of the world’s only SBD-2p Douglas Dauntless Dive Bomber on Friday, hosted a wonderful and emotional Aloha party to say goodbye to the aircraft on Saturday, and began taking it apart for transport on Monday. Bittersweet to say the least, as we are preparing to send the SBD back home to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum (PHAM) in Honolulu, HI after our team spent over 40,000 hours restoring her to her former glory. With a PHAM restorer joining us that week, our team took off and crated some of the major components, including the propeller, wings, and control surfaces, in preparation for truck transport to Los Angeles. Those components should arrive in LA this week and will soon be loaded onto a cargo aircraft en route to Honolulu. The fuselage is fully wrapped in our Flight Discovery Center and ready to be placed on a truck, hopefully this week, for travel to Long Beach, CA, where it will be placed on a cargo ship destined for Hawaii. PHAM leaders are still excited about the prospect of putting the SBD-2p back together in time for a dedication around the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th. We’re wishing this beautifully restored aircraft the best of luck on a safe and timely journey home.
