73
w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
after raising the $125,000 necessary to purchase it, they acquired
it for the museum.
Then, in 2018, the decision was made to fly Miss Montana to Nor-
mandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. She wasn't yet airwor-
thy, so the museum acquired another DC-3 to train with while
Miss Montana was restored. In 2019, crewed by Eric Komberec
and others, she flew to Normandy, with stops at Duxford and
Caen, before making the return trip home to Missoula—where
she sits proudly today, having been named the official state
plane of Montana in 2023.
The museum has a number of other remarkable planes, includ-
ing a 1929 Travel Air 6000 on loan from founder Dick Komberec
(one of only six still-flying Travel Airs in the world), a WWII-
era TBM-3 Avenger torpedo bomber that flew with the JFS from
1967–1975, a Howard DGA-11, a Bell 47G helicopter, and an
A-26 Invader prominently featured in Steven Spielberg's super-
natural smokejumper romance Always (1989), which was filmed
in Montana.
The Museum of Mountain Flying operates today with no em-
ployees, only volunteers. It is open every day from Memorial
Day weekend to mid-September in Missoula, Montana, the town
that proudly calls itself the birthplace of mountain flying.
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montanaheritagehomebuilders.com 406-892-1972
270 US HWY 2 East, Suite B, Columbia Falls, Montana
