New Orleans National WWII Museum
The "best plane ever built" to soar again
The National World War II Museum will offer visitors a firsthand look at a C-47 aircraft donated to the museum by benefactors Paul and Lulu Hilliard, at the Lakefront Airport Saturday before it's mounted aloft at the museum.
The restored aircraft was described by famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle as “the workingest airplane in existence. Almost any pilot would tell you it was the best airplane ever built.” This C-47 carried Pathfinder paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It dropped a Pathfinder paratrooper team of the 101st Airborne into German-occupied Holland in Operation Market Garden. And it flew in a massive resupply mission to the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge and participated in Operation Varsity, “the Rhine Jump,” in 1945.
View the aircraft free from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at Lakefront Airport, 6001 Stars and Stripes Blvd. The first 200 children to arrive will receive Army Air Corps wings. The museum will present hands-on activities for young people, and WWII re-enactors in authentic paratrooper uniforms will share knowledge about the war in the air and on the ground.