Sedgwick County to help pay for Doc’s new home at Eisenhower Airport

In a move to bolster civic pride and tourism, Sedgwick County is joining Wichita and private donors in a $6.5 million effort to build a home for ‘Doc,’ one of the last two airworthy B-29 bombers from World War II.

The county pledged $200,000 Wednesday toward building a glass-sided hangar and education center at Eisenhower National Airport to display the bomber, which was rescued from an aircraft graveyard in the California desert and restored by Wichita volunteers.

County Commissioner David Dennis, a retired Air Force colonel, led the mission to liberate county funding for Doc – complete with a video showing B-29s in action during the war.

“Today, out of all those almost 4,000 aircraft that were built, only 22 survive and only two of those planes to have survived are flyable,” he said. “One is Fifi and the other is Doc.”

Dennis said the bomber is a tribute to the Wichita aircraft workers who built it, combat flight crews who trained in Wichita, Great Bend, Herrington, Topeka, Hays and Salina, and women pilots who ferried the planes from Kansas to the battle zones.

“Doc is really a part of our nation’s history, it’s a critical part of Wichita history, it’s a critical part of Kansas history,” Dennis said. “I’m not sure how many of you know how many sacrifices that the men and women who flew those B-29s made for our country.”

Commissioner Jim Howell said he sees it as an investment in economic development.

“I believe people will travel to Wichita to visit this unique airplane,” he said.

Commissioner Richard Ranzau, an Army veteran, was the only dissenting voice and vote on funding for Doc’s hangar.

Ranzau said a few months ago, the county increased stormwater fees to raise about $200,000 for system improvements – the same amount as the subsidy for the Doc hangar.

“I voted against raising that fee because I knew then as I know now, that we have the money to do those things if we just prioritize things,” he said.

“When things like this come before me, I have to ask the question: Can this and should this be funded by the private sector? And in this particular case the answer is yes,” he said. “I understand there’s a desire to help the city of Wichita build a hangar for a privately owned aircraft, but to this date, everything’s been done privately and it should stay that way.”

Commission Chairman Dave Unruh replied that Wichita has committed $900,000 and even with the county’s $200,000, the bulk of the money, $5.4 million, is coming from private donations by aircraft companies and aviation history enthusiasts.

The county funding will go to the Friends of Doc, a nonprofit corporation formed in 2014 to manage the bomber.

The restoration of the aircraft took 13 years. And in July of 2016, the bomber took to the skies for the first time since it was decommissioned in 1956.

The group has raised most of the money needed to pay for the hangar and broke ground on the project in September.

This story was originally published December 20, 2017 at 1:59 PM with the headline "Sedgwick County to help pay for Doc’s new home at Eisenhower Airport."