Tyler, Texas (KYTX)-- Visitors have been flocking to the Tyler Historic Aviation Memorial Museum since the B-29 bomber "FiFi" arrived yesterday.
But for Dale Whitton, seeing the aircraft isn't easy.
"You have no idea," Whitton, a Marine Corps Veteran from World War II, said. He was in charge of guarding B-29 planes while stationed on Tinian Island.
"These planes carried a tremendous bomb load. If there was room to park a plane, they parked a plane," Whitton said of his surroundings.
Through tears he says he had planned on coming to see FiFi with a friend that served alongside him, but that friend passed away a few weeks ago.
"I was hoping he was able to be here, but he's not," Whitton said.
It's a plane that tends to stir up old memories.
"It was a heavy bomber over Japan, and then ultimately ended the war with the two atomic bombs," Tom Travis, who pilots this B-29 for the Commemorative Air Force, said.
FiFi is the only one of its kind still in operation."And it'll probably be the only one that ever flies again," Travis said.
Visitors say the pictures don't do the B-29 justice.
"I actually touched the prop, I touched the side, and in a museum type you can't get near it," Dolores Sutherland, a visitor at the museum, said.
The plane leaves for Little Rock, Ark. on Friday morning.
