Description
These images show Joe Gabriel and other Lockheed Aircraft Corporation employees circa 1952. Lockheed employees were contracted to refurbish and restore B-29 Bomber planes developed during WWII. Many of these plans had been stored in the Texas desert since the end of WWII. Gabriel and other Lockheed employees were chosen to fly about 130 old bombers from Texas to Marietta. Employees began flying planes in the spring of 1951. In November 1951, one plane crashed - plane 065. Joe Gabriel was on this plane, and so was crew member Joe Sedita. Both men survived. For more information about the 1952 B-29 relocation, see chapter eight of "Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South: A Twentieth-Century History" by Dr. Thomas Allan Scott.
Citation
Joe Gabriel and Lockheed employees, circa 1952, Joe B. Gabriel Digital Image Collection, circa 1952, SC/G/001, Kennesaw State University Archives.