The crew will be giving rides in Maid in the Shade for those who purchase tickets from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Tickets are available online at https://www.azcaf.org/location/logan-ut-tour-stop/.

According to the organization’s website, the Flying Legends of Victory tour runs May through September to give people a chance to see and learn about the historic planes.

The tour is comprised of two flying warbirds — the B-25 Maid in the Shade and the B-17 Sentimental Journey — which visit approximately 15 cities.

The B-25 arrived in Logan on Monday at 11 a.m. The plane will leave for the next stop on the tour, Pocatello, on June 30.

Commemorative Air Force pilot Jordan Brown was the pilot in command for the most recent leg of the tour, from Denver to Logan.

B-25 airplanes were used all throughout WWII and into the 1960s, according to Brown, when the model was decommissioned.

“This airplane specifically is an actual combat veteran, which makes it unique,” Brown said.

According to co-pilot David Kennerly, the Maid in the Shade is one of only two B-25s that saw combat and are still air worthy. Out of nearly 10,000 B-25s produced, only 34 are still flying.

Kennerly said the plane flew 15 combat missions out of the Serragia airfield in Corsica, France.

Volunteer Jess Johnson was waiting at the airport when the plane landed in Logan and quickly got to work cleaning up the plane from its flight.

Johnson is a history teacher in Mackay, Idaho, who encountered the tour in California a year and a half ago. He decided to volunteer to assist with the tour during its two weeks in Logan and Pocatello.

Johnson explained the history of the B-25 warplane and the strike on Tokyo that made them famous.

It was 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers who made the first American air strike on Japan during WWII. Known as the Doolittle Raid, the bombers launched from the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet to strike Tokyo on April 18, 1941. The raid was retaliation for the Dec. 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

“They may not have done too much damage,” Johnson said, “but they got Japan’s attention.”

People who tour the Maid in the Shade can walk under the plane to look inside of the bomb bay. The bay walls are covered with writing — dates and names of crew members who flew missions in B-25s.

On the nose of the plane is a depiction of a woman reclining.

The plane’s current nose art is not the same that decorated it during the war, Kennerly said, but the rest of the plane’s color is accurate.

Brown said as far as bomber planes go, the B-25 is like a sports car, with two 1700-horsepower engines making them some of the noisiest airplanes in his experience.

He said a big part of the tour is educating, honoring and inspiring, particularly young people.

“Instead of being in a museum where it sits static and you can only see it, here you get to see inside it, you get to see it start, watch it come to life,” Brown said. “You smell it and hear the engines.”

The mission of the Commemorative Air Force is to educate Americans so generations will continue to value and support the contributions of military aviation in assuring their nation’s freedom.

Learn more about the museum and its historic fleet at https://www.azcaf.org/explore/museum-history/.