It was a landing most people have only seen in old war movies.
A massive B-29 bomber, nicknamed Fifi, touched down on Canadian soil this week as part of a mission to keep history alive. The plane will remain at St-Hubert airport just outside Montreal all week.
Volunteers in the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) have been flying the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, dubbed the largest flying museum in the world, and other planes across America for decades.
It’s the culmination of a lifelong journey for Neil Agather. Fifi was named after his mother, and restored by his father.
Agather’s father Victor was assigned to the B-29 program during the Second World War. Decades later, he and the CAF set out to find and restore one of the Superfortresses.
They found Fifi at a U.S. Navy proving ground at China Lake, Calif., where the plane was being used as a missile target, and worked to rescue and restore the aircraft to its former glory.
Since then, the CAF has been flying the aircraft around the United States, giving visitors a rare look at a piece of American aviation history.
Flying Fifi is not cheap. The plane burns more than 1,500 litres of fuel an hour, at a cost of more than $10,000.
Designed and built in the U.S. during the Second World War, the B-29 Superfortress was the height of aircraft technology at that time.
“It was like nothing else. It was literally like Star Trek,” pilot Bill Goeken told CTV News. “It was beyond state of the art.”
Designed to fly higher and longer than other aircrafts, the plane also came equipped with remote control guns, radar, and a pressurized cockpit.
“They spent more money on developing this than developing a nuclear weapon,” Donald Boccacio, the tour’s manager, said.
It’s an investment that paid off, with the B-29 playing a pivotal, and deadly, role in the Second World War, dropping the atomic bombs in Japan and effectively ending the war.
Goeken said they still fly Fifi to keep the lessons of history alive, with the plane serving as a reminder of the lengths the world went to end the war.
With fewer than 4,000 B-29s made, and only two of them still airworthy, Fifi’s visit north provides Canadians a rare opportunity to see a Superfortress aircraft up close and personal.
“To hear it, touch it, smell it. It’s a different experience,” Agather said.
Some visitors will even get the chance to buy a ticket for a 30-minute ride on the plane.
Ticket prices run between $600 and $1,700, with the money going towards keeping the B-29 in the air.
Canadians will be able to see Fifi at airfields across Ontario this summer, with seven stops scheduled before September 2.
With a report from CTV’s Montreal Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin
