B-26 Marauder

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Thursday August 15, 2019 · 12:17 PM PDT

2019/08/15 · 12:17

Something new spotted in restoration at Pima Air and Space Museum this Monday.

The photo shows a few restoration projects under the sun shade in front of the main restoration hangar. Three have been there for a few weeks now: a Coast Guard Dassault Guardian, an old Sikorsky Dragonfly helicopter, and a Marine Corps or Navy F/A-18 Hornet. What's new is the olive drab fuselage section in the middle. It's an Army Air Force Martin B-26 Marauder, a medium bomber from WWII.

In all my life I've seen only one other Marauder, this one at the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio.

Nearly all Marauders were scrapped at the end of the war and today just three are on display: one in France and two in the USA. Wikipedia says there's a single flying example at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida, and three more currently being restored at US museums (including my museum's example). Seven remain of the 5,288 built.

So I guess what I'm saying is this is one warbird you don't see every day. Now that I've looked into it, I believe PASM has had this B-26 for some years, sitting in a storage building in the back lot. There's a photo of the same fuselage section on PASM's website (you have to scroll down past a couple of other Martin aircraft to see it). It doesn't look like work has actually started on the Marauder, but the mere fact that the fuselage is now parked in front of the main resto hangar indicates it'll start soon. I, for one, can't wait to see it finally on display.

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B-26 Marauder

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