Miss Montana Aircraft to be Featured on CBS Sunday Morning
Not only will the Miss Montana C-47 aircraft be crossing the English Channel to take part in the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion next week, the aircraft and crew will also be the lead story on CBS Sunday Morning on June 2.
Miss Montana pilot Bryan Douglass was a special guest on the KGVO Montana Morning News on Friday and spoke of how the network became involved in the coverage.
“The correspondent was Richard Schlesinger, and he does reporting mostly for ‘48 Hours’ but he also does occasional ‘Sunday Morning’ stories,” said Douglass. “He’s a really nice guy, and a pilot. He got to ride along in the jump seat right behind me and Nico when we did the Hudson River trip, and he was enjoying that.”
Douglass related how Schlesinger became aware of the ‘Miss Montana’ project.
“He knows the guy who’s the head of the D-Day squadron in Connecticut, Eric Zifkin, and last year he went to Eric when he found out about this whole thing and he said, ‘I want to do a story on one of these planes that’s working hard to get ready to go, and Eric said, ‘you need to go to Montana’, Douglass laughed.
Douglass looked forward to the D-Day ceremony and possibly an even more visible role in the event.
“We’re ramping up towards the big day, or the big two days, June 4th and 5th,” he said. “We’re still talking about possibly being included in the June 6th official ceremony where there’d be a flight of nine to 12 C-47’s with hopefully us included in conjunction with the French Blue Angels and some American C-130’s all crossing over Omaha Beach Cemetery with Presidents Macron and Trump looking on, so we’re hoping to be a part of that.”
Following the D-Day commemoration, Douglass said the ‘Miss Montana’ has been invited to fly over Germany to take part in the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. Then, the aircraft and crew will make their way home back to Missoula, Montana.