Plane Lovers Work Piecemeal to Rescue Vintage Bomber

Under the blazing sun, surrounded by vintage 1930s Union Pacific Pullman cars, a group of World War II veterans and aviation enthusiasts Saturday labored for love.

Piece by piece, the team dismantled a 1949 Lockheed-built bomber that was used in the Korean War and has been displayed for the past 30 years at the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park.

Travel Town officials decided several years ago to make trains the focus of the transportation museum.

To save the P-2V Neptune from destruction, a group of airplane buffs, led by North Hollywood resident Bradley Grose, agreed to remove it and have been working for the past two months to disassemble it.

Grose and the others hope to restore the plane to flying condition at the Burbank Airport and then move it to an airfield in Dos Palos, Calif., that is being turned into a museum.

Grose, who works as an art director and has an extensive collection of World War II aviation memorabilia, said he and his friends are willing to sacrifice their weekends so future generations can experience the thrill of seeing a World War II airplane fly.

“There is a romance to the old World War II planes, the planes of the ‘40s, that jet planes just don’t have,” Grose said.