It’s fair to say Norm Stevens loves the C-54 Skymaster.
During his 10-year Air Force career, Stevens, 92, of Bennington, flew the 1940s-vintage military transport around the world. He evacuated prisoner-of-war nurses from the Philippines in the latter days of World War II, hauled food and fuel into besieged Berlin during the airlift of 1948-49 and ferried wounded troops from Korea to Japan during the Korean War.
“It was the first really good four-engine transport built in World War II,” Stevens said. “It was an outstanding aircraft to fly.”
Tonight, Stevens will sit once again in the cockpit of a C-54. He will be the guest of honor at the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Ashland, where officials will unveil to invited guests their latest exhibit, a newly restored Skymaster that once belonged to the Cold War-era Strategic Air Command.
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Beginning Monday, it will be on display for all visitors. The museum’s board voted last summer to change the name of the museum to the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, but the change won’t take effect until May 2016.
It’s a happy ending for an aircraft battered by the Nebraska elements for 42 years. The cargo transport, No. 42-72724, was built in Chicago and delivered to the Army Air Forces on July 16, 1945.
Details are limited about the cargoes it carried over the years before it was delivered to SAC 20 years later. It was flown by the 809th Combat Air Support Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and later with the 100th Strategic Wing until its retirement in 1970.
SAC turned the aircraft over to the museum, then located at Offutt Air Force Base. It sat on the tarmac at Offutt, where it “baked in the sun, froze in the winter, and became home to innumerable insects, rodents and birds,” according to a museum press release.
The plane stayed there until 1998, when it was trucked 30 miles to the new museum in Ashland. Its first day there, a violent thunderstorm blew the 27-ton aircraft into a fence, damaging its tail.
Finally, the C-54 was moved indoors in 2012 — in unusually sorry shape, said Mark Hamilton, the museum’s restorations co-manager. Time, space and money eventually converged to allow the Skymaster to be refurbished.
“When you start, you say, ‘How are we ever going to get this done?’ ” Hamilton said.
More than 30 volunteers contributed nearly 1,700 hours to buff it up to museum quality. Their unpaid work allowed the museum to keep the restoration cost to about $30,000, Hamilton said.
About $4,000 came in from memorials in honor of retired Air Force Lt. Col. Roger Ihle of Omaha, a World War II veteran who volunteered on the project before his death last year at age 95.
Now the aluminum skin gleams shiny silver, and the National Aircraft Insignia — the familiar white star inside a blue circle — has been freshly hand-painted on the fuselage.
“It’s time to have a party, man!” Hamilton said.
Stevens is excited about the prospect of boarding a C-54 for the first time in years. He certainly had plenty of adventures flying them decades ago.
Stevens grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, the son of a fireman in the region known as Iron Range. He joined the Army Air Forces in 1942, hoping to become a pilot and was disappointed when he was sent to glider school instead.
He wangled an appointment to flight school and was selected to train in Florida with the Royal Air Force. He earned a rating to fly four-engine aircraft in May 1944 and became a C-54 pilot.
Stevens flew to the Philippines and Okinawa after they were captured and to mainland Japan after the surrender. On Aug. 19, 1945, he dropped off an aircraft at Ie Shima near Okinawa that would take a Japanese delegation to Manila to receive the terms of surrender from Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Some of Stevens’ hairiest flying came following the Soviet blockade of Berlin. Once, he lost most of his instruments in darkness and heavy weather after taking off with a load of cargo for the German capital and was guided back to the airfield by traffic controllers.
“They swung me out over Russian territory,” Stevens said. “When I got back and saw the runway lights, that was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.”
During the Korean War, he flew C-54s between Korea and Japan, including once into North Korea to evacuate wounded Marines from the brutal Chosin Reservoir campaign. Stevens left the military after serving in Korea to become a civilian test pilot for Douglas Aircraft.
He trained pilots for eight different airlines to fly the DC-8, Douglas’ first commercial jet aircraft.
He ended his career as a senior marketing representative for the company, working at Offutt.
Stevens retired in 1979 and stayed in Omaha with his wife, Louise. She died last year.
During his career, Stevens flew 86 different types of aircraft. But he considers the C-54 the best of all the military models he flew. He should know — he flew 6,000 hours and more than 1 million miles in the pilot’s seat.
“There’s a lot of stories,” he said. “That airplane has earned a lot of medals.”
Contact the writer: 402-444-1186, steve.liewer@owh.com