230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd. ● P.O. Box 2001, Ridgecrest, CA 93556 ● 760-375-8456 Vol. 35, No. 1 January 2020 To see our schedule of events, visit us at hsumd.org or on Facebook at HSUMD When “Doc,” the well-remembered B-29 from China Lake’s boneyard, made a return visit to Inyokern last October, it seemed like a good opportunity to revisit some of Doc’s history in the local area and bring out some of the stories involved in moving and saving Doc. So, for our January meeting, we’ll have Mark Pahuta present two short videos and Doug Lueck relate his part in moving Doc from China Lake’s Baker Range to Inyokern. We invite anyone else with a tale to tell about Doc to come to the meeting and share. The meeting will start at 7:00 PM, Tuesday, January 21, at the Historic USO Building, 230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd. Mark Pahuta will present two videos that he co-photographed and edited documenting two B-29 aircraft that were saved from destruction at China Lake. The first video (actually a ten-minute 16mm film) 299 Foxtrot (1976) tells the story of a B-29 sitting for years in the China Lake boneyard waiting to be dragged out on the ranges to serve as a target for an air-to-ground weapon test. Instead, a group of aviation historians managed to intercede and refurbish the plane for eventual museum display. The aircraft flew out of China Lake’s Armitage Field on June 15, 1976. The second video, made in 1998, documents the B-29 “Doc” and its 4-day journey from Baker Range to Inyokern. Although the video ends with Doc arriving at Inyokern, the rest of the story is even more amazing. After the move, Doc was trucked in pieces back to its original plant in Wichita, Kansas—where it was originally built during World War II—and then restored to flying status. It is now one of only two flyable B-29s, in the world. Perhaps not so coincidentally, both came from China Lake’s boneyard. Pahuta was fresh out of USC film school when he started work in TID’s Film Projects Branch in late November, 1976. 299 Foxtrot was one of the first films he worked on as a government employee. Mark will recount the making of the two shows. He will talk about how 299 Foxtrot was completely fabricated after the fact, how segments from William Wyler’s famous WWII documentary Memphis Belle were used in the film, how the film won many national and international awards, and what General Curtis LeMay thought of the film after he saw a rough cut at China Lake in 1977. Some twenty years later Mark co-photographed and edited the Doc video strictly on a volunteer basis. (Continued on page 3) Vol. 35, No. 1 January 2020 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE- As we start the new year of 2020, we all make one or more resolutions for this year’s goals. Regarding the HSUMD, the resolution we all make is to renew our membership in the Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert. The Society exists only through membership fees and other donations (and Gift Shop purchases), so we know it’s important to renew in January. Your prompt renewal will be much appreciated. Another resolution we make is to accomplish the repair and restoration of our historic engine houses. We made this resolution last year (2019), but unfortunately, we did not have the resources to make much headway. The engine houses were built in the early 1950s as part of our community’s first fire-protection structures and served to house fire engines for about a quarter of a century. Their restoration will complete our restoration of Ridgecrest’s civic origins, following our Historic USO Building, our Veterans Memorial Building, our Original Kern County Jail, and our Original Kern County Firehouse. This year let’s finish our journey! Let’s all have a happy, productive, educational and enjoyable year! The Historical Society will do its best to help you in this endeavor - Tex Hoppus Superb New Book in our Gift Shop! Scenes From Lives of Service, a book created by the Ridge Writers (East Sierra Branch of the California Writers Guild) is in our Gift Shop now. It holds the stories of service and sacrifice of 120 of our own high-desert veterans from World War I to Desert Storm. And our own HSUMD leader, John Abbott (Senior Chief, ret.), and his lovely wife Norma, are featured on its cover. This book is a must-have! Of course, there are delicious See’s candies available and we have other new books and items just arrived. Stop by and see what’s new in the HSUMD Gift Shop, 11AM- 3PM Tuesday-Saturday! Membership in the HSUMD runs from January to December each year, so it’s time to renew, if you haven’t already. Your dues go to support our activities, including maintaining the Historic USO Building, the Veterans Memorial Building, and our other buildings; collecting and preserving our archives; and bringing in speakers every month for our general meetings. Your address label tells you when your membership expires, and there is a form elsewhere in this issue that you can fill out and mail in or bring in to the gift shop if you need to renew. – Andrew Sound 2 Vol. 35, No. 1 January 2020 Now that we are headed into the New Year, I have taken a look back on the progress the collection and archiving volunteers made this past year and it is impressive. After 10 years of sorting filing scanning printing and tearing out of hair, we are finally in a place with our organizing to start on our photo collections and culling of duplicate paperwork. We will start with subject identification with the photos and then move on to who is in the photo. We have thousands of photos and it would amaze you how many have no identification for the event, the date, the place or who the folks are in the photo. We will be working on that task in the next few months. There are plenty to go around if anyone is interested in helping with this part of our organizing. We have complete digital inventories for our maps, books, papers, collected, displayed and archived items thanks to Kitty Ferguson and Don Snyder as well as some of photos and negative listings by Kay Farrell and Doug Whitnell. The date I have set for our surplus book sale is January 24th and 25th. It will be held in the VMB from 11 am to 3 pm, the same hours that our gift shop is open. Please stop by and see if our extras could be your treasures. - Carol Porter Big Band Xpress (BBX) will be back to play at the Historic USO Building on Saturday, January 4th. The doors open at 6 p.m. with a free dance lesson starting at 6:30 p.m until the show starts at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $10.00; tickets available at the door. The proceeds fund music scholarships for local students as well as the HSUMD. The music is wonderful and there will be beverages, including beer and wine, for sale. Come have a great time dancing or just listening to the big band sound! “Doc”, Mark, and Doug (Continued from page 1) Many folks in the community also volunteered their efforts in moving Doc from Baker Range to Inyokern and never got recognition for their efforts. We feel this would be a great opportunity for those people to come forward and tell their stories about what they did to get Doc flying again. The Society meets on the third Tuesday of most months. Meetings are free and all are welcome to attend. For more information on this or future meetings, call the HSUMD at 760-375-8456. – Andrew Sound 3 Vol. 35, No. 1 January 2020 Happy New Year, good neighbors! It’s hard to believe that the HSUMD Classic Movie Night is entering its 11th year of the presentation of feature films in our beautiful Historic USO Building. Watching these classic films in a communal setting, on a large screen with great sound, enhances the viewing enjoyment not equaled on home television sets. The shared vibes of the members of the audience makes film viewing so special. And, speaking of special, we are very proud to be presenting our first Black History Month film series, “Black Film,” beginning on Wednesday, January 8th and running through February 19. Four outstanding films celebrating the Black experience on the big screen are not to be missed. Our premiere film in the series is director Douglas Sirk’s final masterpiece, a 1959 remake of a 1934 production that was based on a popular novel by Fannie Hurst and starred Claudette Colbert. The wildly popular 1959 version has Lana Turner as an aspiring actress who befriends a homeless black woman at Coney Island. They eventually share a tiny apartment and the common bond of raising daughters, both of which are intolerable. Sarah Jane, the black child who is very light-skinned, matures into a teenager who passes for white in public and suffers much heartache and shame. The drama of Annie (Juanita Moore), the black woman who is rejected by her daughter in a time when the color of people was a divisive issue, is utterly heartbreaking and profound. It presented clearly, to audiences, the division in the American society between black and white people.