One American airplane factory.

One of many.

One bomber.

This Martin B-26 Marauder is on display at its final duty station in Ohio.

It's a medium bomber that flew in World War two.

This aircraft was restored and is on display at the MAPS Air Museum near the Akron Canton airport.

Only six of the planes still exist today.

Thirty years ago, the B-26 Historical Society, videotaped the Marauder's air and ground crews.

I was on the first mission on invasion morning.

While the audio and video quality isn't in high definition like today, the historical society's foresight preserves a rich archive of stories of what these men went through during WW2.

And I heard somebody say, "Well, he was a nice guy, sorry to have lost him."

we hear the Marauder Men, in their own words, speak about their trusted machine of war.

The B-26, it was the plane of tomorrow.

The B-26 became one of the best bombers of World War 2.

It had per mission and per capit -a one of the lowest loss rates of any bomber in World War 2.

At least for the American Air Force.

Which led to the crews being very dedicated to the Martin B-26 Marauder.

They felt the aircraft was a great aircraft that got them home.

They would sometimes fly two missions a day.

So it was a rugged aircraft and the crews really really loved it.

And they also have a very strong connection and camaraderie with each other.

They refer to them selves as Marauder Men or with the WASPS Marauder Women.

They're always kinda left out a little bit.

Here they were doing all these missions doing these great strikes and doing these really important missions supporting American and Allied troops on the ground.

But the Army Air Force was all about its strategic campaigns.

So the Eighth Air Force was getting all the news.

Also the B-26 compared to its brother medium bomber the B-25 didn't have a really famous mission like the Doolittle raid that everyone thinks about when they see a B-25.

Just really unfair to the aircraft and to the men and women who flew, serviced, maintained and built the aircraft.

A good airplane.

And I'm here to tell you today that the B-26 was the plane of yesterday, the plane of today, and if you've ever watched the Discovery Channel and seen how many planes have been developed off of the basic design of the B-26, it was the plane of tomorrow.

The Martin B-26 Marauder is probably one of the most important World War Two aircraft you have never heard of.

It was in production for 3 years and only 5288 were ever made.

So the B-26 was a rather advanced bomber of its time.

It had flush rivets, it had power turrets and It used a relative new electric Curtis prop.

So there were some issues early on with the aircraft.

One of them being the prop was kind of finicky and there were times when it would go into reverse pitch or out of pitch on takeoff which would pretty much mean disaster.

Loosing an engine on takeoff in a hot aircraft like the B-26 was catastrophic.

It was also a hot aircraft.

It had what was called a high wing loading which meant it had a very high landing and takeoff speed and what they call a high stall speed.

Mostly because it had short wings and a short tail so it could be fast and sleek.

But that also meant that there was issues with control and also the fact that it was easy to stall.

It was so problematic that it ended up with several derogatory nick names.

Most of the B-26 units that were going overseas were training at McDill Air Force Base near Tampa.

So, there was always the comment about one day in Tampa Bay because they we often loosing them in training incidents.

Several things kind of fixed this over time.

Pilot training was a big one.

They trained pilots better in transition school.

They made sure they had time on twin engine training aircraft instead of going from single engine trainers into the B-26.

Some of the aircraft had similar flight characteristics like the B-26 had.

Another thing was trading mechanics better to deal with some of the issues and flight engineers to deal with some of the issues.

On top of that the later versions had longer wings and a taller tail.

One of the big things to kind of get people, the pilots in particular, to be comfortable about flying the B-26 was when Squeek Burnett an Jimmy Doolittle went around America and then various bases overseas flying B-26s showing that the B-26 could be flown on one engine.

That you weren't going to crash if you knew what you were doing.

And Squeek Burnett would go around these airfields flying on one engine.

Turning the airplane into the engine that was out.

Which is the textbook thing you are not supposed to do with any aircraft, let alone with the B-26.

And was showing people that it was doable and the aircraft was not as problematic as people were saying.

The B-26 featured at the MAPS Air Museum never flew in combat.

It crashed in 1942 while flying from California to it's first wartime base in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.

It was one of three B-26s that were forced down in the Yukon territory of Canada.

We took off.

We went by way of Portland and (unintelligible).

From Portland over to Spokane.

And then we were going to go up the inner route, which as you know, is roughly the route of the ALCAN Highway now.

Up to Edmonton then Whitehorse then on to Fairbanks and then Elmendorf Field at Anchorage, Alaska.

We ran into darkness because we had lost some time at takeoff.

We ran into snow, sleet and we were getting low on gas.

After searching around trying to find where we were.

We soon it soon became evident that we were extremely lost.

We looked at the bad weather and it was decided by the pilots of the flight to crash land the three ships in a high shallow valley roughly about 5,000 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.

We hit the snow and crashed.

Now, you say, why is it you got lost?

Now you see when the war came along, all of the ranges, all of the radio beams, all of the navigation aids were immediately shut off.

Because at that time nobody knew whether or not might be coming in bombing Canada or the western part of the United Sates.

So we were flying without any navigation aids what-so-ever, the best we could do, by the seat of our pants.

These three planes going down in this valley, which later on became know as Million Dollar Valley.

The lack of maps was the cause of that basically.

Also, we were young and inexperienced pilots from the standpoint of flying in the mountains.

It was the early part of the war and some parts of the airplanes were needed to repair others.

Later on in April of 1942 the Air Corp sent in a ground crew to claim some of the parts of these crashed planes.

And the parts we received from that reclamation project turned out to really be our air depot and supply depot for our Aleutian campaign which was soon to come up.

The three Marauders were brought out of their crash site in 1971 by a World War Two airplane restorer, David Tallichet.

The parts for the MAPS B-26 arrived in 1994.

Well, I actually got involved with the B-26 right when we got it.

I was on the board of directors in 1994 when Tallichet called us during a meeting and wanted to know if we were interested in taking on the Marauder project.

We didn't have to think about that very long, and said yes.

David Tallichet was actually one of our early sponsors.

David was well known for farming projects from the aircraft that he'd recovered worldwide to different organizations basically all over the country.

And what had happened with the B-26, David, that was one of the three that his organization recovered from Northern British Columbia in 1971.

And they helicoptered them out and then loaded them on a train and took them down to Chino, California.

Ours and the other one, which is now at the Pima Air Museum, were used to supply parts to restore the one aircraft that he put back in flying condition.

And that particular aircraft is owned by Kermit Weeks at Fantasy of Flight down in Polk City, Florida.

After that, David sent our B-26 to Air Heritage in Beaver Falls, PA. And over time, he became dissatisfied with the progress that they were making.

And so he shipped it to an organization at Cuyahoga County Airport.

And at some point they lost their building so he didn't have a home for it, and since we're nearby and it's a relatively easy trip.

That's how we ended up with the Marauder.

Since it is only one of six in existence, it was brought back to display condition rather than rebuilding it to fly.

We had to take a few liberties with it and mostly for cost and time constraints.

But I think on the outside it looks fairly, fairly accurate representations.

I would call it restored.

She's restored to static display condition.

Our original intent was actually to restore it to flying condition.

and a lot of the work that was done early on, the parts that were manufactured for it were heat treated to the proper strengths so that they would meet airworthiness.

but over time, it became apparent that probably wasn't the best idea to restore it to flying condition given the rarity of the aircraft.

Over 90 people helped rebuild this aircraft housed at the museum.

We didn't have a lot of the skills early on for restoring airplanes, so we had to figure all that out as we went.

We have microfilms of all the original drawings for the airplane, so that's how we could make parts up for it for ribs and all the things that were either damaged or missing.

So it wound up taking about 21 years to where we are today where it's nearly complete as a static display.

A lot of people have touched it along the years, a lot of outside companies that have done things either cheap or for free or donated.

So I'm very grateful to everyone that's helped out on it and turned it into what it is today.

We had one of the guys from Goodyear teach us how to do riveting, how to properly extract rivets and working with the equipment to properly rivet metal together and what we needed to look for and a de facto training academy, if you will.

We had to look at what we were going to do to get the aircraft together structurally as far as putting engines on it, working towards that goal and getting the landing gear cleaned up, and there was a lot of study that was involved.

We actually went with modern day aviation repair manuals and how to do the metal work and how to do the skinning and all that other stuff.

There was a lot of research on how the aircraft were put together as best we could.

This was pre-internet days, so we just had to go buy whatever books we could get our hands on or whatever experience other people had with the actual aircraft.

It requires a lot of different talents.

We have, well, Dave, who is the crew chief, is an engineer to make work on the parts.

I know that he used CAD/CAM to actually design the templates for some of the parts that we made.

Everybody brought different talents to the project and those of us who are not aviation mechanics, we learned by doing.

Learning from people who knew what they were doing and were willing to teach us.

It's such a big project that it's something that one person can't do by themselves.

It takes a team, and I think that's what makes it fun is you get everybody together and working towards a common goal.

And one of the things that was really fun that Dave did was he applied his engineering talents to making a jig stand for the wings so he could do all the repairs that were necessary to the structure on the wings and the engine and the engine lasalles.

Now this jig he designed not only was a framework to support the wing, but it allowed the wing to be rotated about its long axis so you could actually get to different areas as you needed to work on it and that was just fascinating.

Initially, we only worked Wednesdays, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings.

So we get people in and the time was limited.

A lot of us were still working full-time.

So it's the reality of the thing and just what I found fun was just to see it come together.

You build the pieces, you begin to put it together.

Well, a lot of hands touched it over the years, and I certainly couldn't have done any of this on my own.

I just do my part of it, but I always give credit to the crew and we're a team and everybody has input on it.

Yeah, it's just a great group of people and I think we live in a nice area here where people have a lot of skills to offer and it just always seems like the right person or the right thing comes in at the right time.

Have really been blessed and MAPS has been blessed.

So we're very grateful.

The restoration crew members grew to have a heightened respect for what the World War II crews went through.

You start to think about having read a lot of books about air crew experiences and then actually talking to the guys that flew in these aircraft.

When you're up there, it's an empty fuselage full of bits and pieces, but when you're crawling around inside of it, you just get a sense of the guys that were there actually working in these aircraft and what they must have seen and what they must have experienced.

Along with a new respect for the World War II flyers came a growing desire to learn the history of the planes as they were used in the different theaters of operation.

Well, just the history of the aircraft, the Marauder is such a rare airplane and to a degree,underrepresented in the history of World War Two.

I mean, there were something over 5,000 of them made, and although it suffered through all kinds of problems in training pilots because it was a much hotter aircraft than what a lot of people were used to, it achieved the lowest loss rate in combat of any American aircraft.

And then after the war, most of the ones that were in Europe were dynamited on site on the field in Europe.

I think it's just an under appreciated aircraft, which is why I feel such a great affection for it.

The restoration team members experienced not only the satisfaction of a job well done, but it gave them a sense of what the original ground and air crews saw and did.

It amazed me as I crawled around inside these old airplanes that 50 years earlier, at that time anyways,there were guys in full flight suits and parachutes, and I don't know how I did it myself, to be honest with you.

I find it a tight space and I'm just in jeans and a T-shirt.

There was a big flak burst right underneath the starboard engine and a big chunk of flak came through the plexiglass nose.

The thing that saved my life was my ammunition belt that I had looped into the gun.

It exploded to one of the bullets.

I still have the bullet and piece of flak.

I got hit about the face and some glass in my eyes, and naturally, I jumped back.

I was flying as togglier at the time.

I jumped back, I lost my hand mic, it went under my legs someplace and I still had my eye on that lead plane to drop on it, I could hear the pilot calling me and the smoke drifting back through the tunnel there over the co-pilot's legs, and I could hear them trying to contact me.

And I heard somebody say, "Well, he was a nice guy, sorry to have lost him."

And about that time, I dropped.

The lead man, I dropped on him and I scooted out of that nose as fast as I could get.

If you remember anything about the B-26, the co-pilot had to lift up his latch there and slide his seat back, so the bombardier, navigator or whoever was up front could get out.

I didn't even need that.

I went past him like a scared rabbit, and I didn't stop till I hit the bombay doors and he couldn't believe that I got past them when I did.

Now we landed and they were sending the ambulance up to take me down to the dispensary to patch me up a little bit, and while I was waiting, I think I counted about 29 holes in the aircraft, and I went down and I went to the dispensary and they cleaned me up and cleaned out my eyes and cauterized my wounds, and as I'm leaving the dispensary, somebody comes along, "Hey, Levy, we're looking for you.

We got to the mission this afternoon."

And I said, "I can't.

I haven't been to briefing.

I don't know where we're going."

He says, "Don't worry about it.

We're going back to the same place."

I remember at one point, Dave, the leader of the pack, said we were getting the pilot seat for the bomber.

And he had been in contact with somebody, I think it was North Carolina or South Carolina.

It was a curio shop, what I understand, and they somehow had the pilot seat for a B26 bomber.

So we round up some money, all the guys, and he drove down there with this pickup truck and brought back the pilot seat.

It was beautiful.

It was worn just enough to be right.

The upholstery was right.

So he checked it all out and everything was there.

So he said, "Well, let's take it over and put it in the plane."

And in the cockpit floor, there was a set of rails.

And we picked up the seat, lifted it up, and set it down and went right in the tracks, just perfect.

and it slid as it should.

So we got it adjusted and tightened it up.

and Dave said, "You mind if I sit in it first?"

I said, "No."

So I got in the co-pilot seat and we had the side windows open.

We're looking out the window hanging out like a couple kids.

And Dave sits there in the seat and I'm just watching him.

His hands go right over to the throttle, automatically right to the throttle.

And he's sitting there and I'm watching him and I was like watching a movie of like invasion of Normandy.

He was sitting there looking out through the windshield and just watching the cliffs come up and everything, and it was amazing.

It was very, very emotional.

So he's sitting there, he looked over and says, "You want to sit," and I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."

So I got in the seat and the same movie played for me.

I was on the first mission on invasion morning, and that was one of the things that I look back and I say, it was probably the greatest sight a person will ever see.

All of the ships and all of the airplanes and all of the men, we had a very definite pattern.

If you took off, you had to go at a certain altitude, which was really low level so that all the other planes taking off from all of the other bases at the same time, you wouldn't collide.

And our mission at that invasion morning was at 1500 feet.

Clearing the beaches along they were shooting, just shooting at random to keep the German's heads down so the men could make the beaches.

And we watched, look over the side, and we could see them getting out of their landing craft and hitting the beaches and made that pass, and of course, you can see where the parachuters had been the night before and landed.

It seems to be one of the favorites among the 55 aircraft on display or under restoration at the MAPS Museum.

I like to honor the people that designed it, built it, of course, flew it, maintained it, and just for their efforts on it.

I don't think that could ever be duplicated again.

So that that's what's in it for me.

Yeah, I like paying tribute to all those people and the sacrifices they all made.

Boyer was great for unusual training techniques.

He was the first one, or he was the only one for that matter who showed me and several other of my friends how to barrel roll a B-26, which was strictly forbidden.

I had a number of firsts.

I to my knowledge was the first man to be on a B-26 that spun in.

Jack Beal, the pilot and Al Graves was the copilot.

And we spun in because we had the type that did not have those boots.

Those deicing boots on the wings.

And we built up because of ice build up on the wings as I understand it.

We hit a high speed stall and spun in and we crash landed in in the mountains.

And I'd read a lot about aircraft and bombers and B-26s.

But being a bombardier I wasn't real sure about the mechanics of flying.

But I was, never had read up to that point of a B-26 coming out of a spin.

And naturally during that spin you don't have all that amount of time to do a lot of research.

But it was a There's one thing that was attributed to me after we crash landed and got out of the plane.

Was that I stuck my knife in the ground and claimed that land for Texas.

That's not true.

I stuck the radio antenna in the ground and claimed that land for Texas.