Over the long arc of America’s aviation history, the B25J Mitchell is a storied World War II military aircraft, a two-piston engine propeller-driven medium bomber. Its name, like the jet-powered B52, is synonymous with stability, strength, and longevity.
With a distinguished past, present – and future – the men and women at The Warbirds of Glory Museum, in New Hudson, Michigan, are helping preserve and restore one of those famous flying machines, the B-25J Mitchell bomber known as the "Sandbar Mitchell.”
In 1969, Sandbar Mitchell crash-landed on a sandbar in the Tanana River in Alaska, after serving as a civilian fire bomber. It remained there until 2013, when the museum's founders, Patrick Mihalek and Todd Trainor, recovered it and transported it to Michigan for restoration.
Today the Warbirds Museum relies on a variety of 3D laser measurement technology to help complete their historic restorations, including the ability to track the outlines of sheet metal parts to compare to the company’s CAD models. Watch the above video to learn more about how the nonprofit used the FARO® Leap ST® for a variety of quality assurance and reverse engineering tasks and how they’re also helping educate the next generation of manufacturing specialists through the museum’s student apprenticeship program. The museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.