(Tribune News Service) — Behind the Aviator Brewing Company, amid the trucks and rows of empty beer kegs, sits an airplane cut in half, its nose and tail sections placed side by side.

The plane is a Douglas C-54, introduced during World War II to carry cargo for the U.S. military. This particular C-54 played a supporting role in the Berlin Airlift, when American and British planes ferried food and fuel to sections of the German capital for more than a year after the Soviet Union blocked land access to the city in 1948.

Tim Chopp was still flying the plane as late as 2019. Chopp is founder and president of The Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation, and for more than two decades he took the C-54, dubbed Spirit of Freedom, to air shows, telling the story of the airlift.

Chopp has only seen pictures of the plane in pieces.

“Oh, my heart broke seeing it all cut up like that,” he said by phone from his home in New Jersey. “I mean all the hours I flew that airplane. Did so many nice things with it during that time, flying all over the country. So to see that happen to it, it was awful.”

And yet, there really wasn’t any choice, Chopp says. And now he’s looking forward to the next chapter of the plane’s life as a showpiece in Aviator Brewing’s new brewery, restaurant and bar complex now under construction in downtown Fuquay-Varina, N.C.

Historic plane damaged beyond repair

Chopp would still be flying Spirit of Freedom had it not been damaged by a tornado at the Low Country Airport in Walterboro, S.C., in April 2020. The plane had been taken to the airport for some electronics work, then left parked as the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic canceled air shows.

The tornado picked up the plane and flew it backward 170 yards into a hangar. A steel beam cut through the left wing, while the hangar door took a chunk out of the right. The bottom of the fuselage was sliced open, and the flight control system was badly damaged.

“The wing damage was so severe that there was no instructions on how to repair that much damage,” Chopp said. “As one guy said, ‘The best way to repair this is to build a Douglas Aircraft factory first and then build it.’ ”

The Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation set out to find another C-54. It found one in Florida and has been working to restore the plane and turn it into a new Spirit of Freedom flying museum that the original was all those years.

Meanwhile, the damaged plane sat at Low Country Airport. Unable to find a buyer, Chopp said, it appeared the foundation would have to scrap it.

That’s where Mark Doble comes in.

Shipping a big plane to Fuquay-Varina

Doble is founder and CEO of Aviator Brewing. As the theme of his business implies, he’s passionate about flying and aviation history. Doble says he heard about the damaged C-54 through aviation circles and thought it might be a good addition for the new brewery and restaurant complex.

“It just popped up,” he said. “And when we heard about it, we’re like, ‘Oh, they’re probably going to want a ton of money.’ And then logistics and expenses, and we’re like, ‘Oh, we probably can’t do it.’ ”

But Chopp was getting desperate. Selling it for scrap was going to end up costing him $25,000 in labor and transportation costs. So he offered it to Doble for $2,500.

“Mark saved me $25,000 by buying it from me for $2,500,” he said.

There was still the challenge of hauling the plane 240 miles from Walterboro to Fuquay-Varina. A C-54 is more than 93 feet long, with a wingspan of more than 117 feet. The only solution was to cut the plane into pieces.

Doble and Kenny Agnor, Aviator’s head of brewery operations, did the work themselves. They cut the fuselage in half so it could be loaded onto two flatbed trucks. They also cut the wings in half. The ends of the wings slid easily inside the plane, but the sections closest to the fuselage wouldn’t fit.

“It was just too wide and large,” Doble said. “It would have taken two more trucks. It would have doubled our cost. So we left it, and they scrapped it.”

The plane, in two sections on two trucks, departed Walterboro in April 2023, more than three years after the tornado.

The Berlin Airlift foundation kept parts of the airplane to help it restore and maintain its replacement, including tires, brakes, propellers and three of the engines. The cockpit has been stripped, and parts of the wings and tail fins remain stacked inside the front section of the plane.

As bad as the tornado damage was, Agnor says, “it looks more tragic now because we had to take it apart.”

Plane will continue its educational mission

Lifting and trucking the pieces from South Carolina cost about $8,000, Doble said. He plans to build a concrete cradle for the plane and reassemble it, so people can go inside. Aviator will also need to build frames for the missing wing sections, so people will see just how big the C-54 is.

Doble hopes to have the plane in place when the new brewery, restaurant and bar complex opens early next year.

Doble has asked Chopp to be there for the grand opening and to speak about the C-54 and the Berlin Airlift. Chopp has provided all of the plane’s flight logs going back to the 1940s and will help with the educational materials that Aviator Brewing will display in and around it.

Which is why Chopp considers the Spirit of Freedom’s move to Fuquay-Varina a good ending for its long flying career.

“I think it’s something we can be proud of,” he said. “It will be continuing its educational purpose by doing what it’s doing with Mark. Whoever looks at it and reads the information will be getting educated about what the airlift was all about. That’s what we do.”

©2024 Raleigh News & Observer.

Visit newsobserver.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.