On A "Plane" 'Ol Mission

"We were a Boeing family," Martin added. "My mother and father helped build the first B-29."
Like thousands of other Wichita people, his family lived out their entire lives building airplanes for Boeing, Beech and Cessna, Martin said. .
Adding more, the two volunteer museum board members credit their effort toward saving the building as a museum to the stories they've heard of the men and women who passed through Pratt on their way to World War II - and are still living. Another part of their dedication lies in saving the history they gather from families linked the Pratt base who lost loved ones in the war.
Schulz recounted a poignant meeting with the nephew of a flier who trained at Pratt and didn't come home. He was a young boy when he rode along with his uncle's family the day they delivered their son to the base gate.
"He remembered how handsome his uncle looked dressed in his military uniform when he walked through the gate," Schulz said. "That was the last time he saw his uncle."
Schulz recently attended a reunion of the 73rd B-29 Bomber Wing in Wichita and came home with a renewed inspiration for the project.
"This is a story that has to be remembered for these people," he said. "Their numbers are fading fast."
Along with a display of artifacts, a plane tire with rubber burned down to the cord and a full dress uniform from a family whose husband and father recently passed away, museum volunteers have embraced a mission for collecting stories in an audio library.
"We want to hear from anyone with a tie to this base - cooks to aircraft commanders," Schulz said. "How it impacted the town, about how with no housing available they made places for young airmen and their wives in chicken coops and attics."
In a walk-around tour of the Parachute Building, with its 40-foot ceiling where the parachutes hung to air out, Schulz pointed out the original wood-panel wainscot walls and a built-in wooden ladder that leads to the ceiling. A system of pulleys and cords hoisted the silk chutes to the top of the structure. Original Celotex wallboard, wood rafters and the thin layer cement floor remain in place in the adjoining room where women once sat at sewing machines. Along with repairing the parachutes, they tailored uniforms and sewed on insignia patches. .
Records show that the air base, a 700-building city, was constructed in one year on speculation that it would be a training base for B-29 crews. Three other bases at Salina, Great Bend and Walker, were also built with the B-29 program in mind. The base opened with B-17 trainers 1942. The first B-29s were delivered in 1943
The base closed in 1946 when the last airplane left and was dismantled over a one-year period, Schulz said. The base had its own hospital, barracks space for up to 5,000 airmen and women, a chapel, officers' club, a service club and five hangers. Total cost was $8.6 million.
The Parachute Building cost $8,000; just $1,000 under the $9,000 new roof they completed last weekend, Martin said.
An estimated 10,000 men and women, crew members through ground support, were trained at Pratt.
An organizational meeting of the Heritage Group, descendants of the 29th Bomb Group assigned to the Pratt base will be held Memorial Day weekend 2011.
For more information about the museum or the Pratt base visit the Web sites prairiebombers.org or www.prattarmyairfield.com.