The Commemorative Air Force: Rebels with a Cause

In nineteen fifty-one, a man named Lloyd Nolen bought a surplus World War Two P-Forty fighter for fifteen hundred dollars in Arizona and flew it back to a small airstrip in South Texas. He had a resolution. If it were humanly possible, at least one of each of the great American fighter planes would be found, restored, and preserved in flying condition.

Six years later, Nolen and four friends pooled another fifteen hundred dollars to buy a P-Fifty-One Mustang called Red Nose. In nineteen fifty-eight, they added a Grumman F-Eight-F Bearcat for eight hundred and five dollars. Both planes flew in their first airshow at Naval Air Station Kingsville. By nineteen sixty-three, the group had achieved their initial goal of acquiring one example of each fighter type flown by American forces in World War Two. The organization they had formed called itself the Confederate Air Force, tongue-in-cheek, because they were fighting a losing battle against the forces of time and metal fatigue.

In nineteen ninety-one, the Confederate Air Force moved its operations to Midland, Texas, where it opened the Airpower Museum at Midland International Airport. The organization later changed its name to the Commemorative Air Force to remove the Confederate reference, and eventually moved its national headquarters to Dallas. But the Midland facility remains a significant site in the organization's history, and warbird aviation in the Permian Basin continues to draw visitors.

The fleet that began with Nolen's single P-Forty grew to more than one hundred seventy aircraft, the largest collection of airworthy World War Two-era warbirds in the world. Among them was a C-Forty-Seven, the specific aircraft that led the parachute assault on Normandy on D-Day, June sixth, nineteen forty-four.