A retired Twin Beech Model 18 plane makes its way down McLean Blvd in Wichita on Wednesday on its way to the Yard Store, a local hardware store, where it will be on display in the fall. The plane was the first assigned to the U.S. Air Force after its creation following World War II.

Wichita ? At Westport Airport on Wichita’s west side (better known to some as Dead Cow International), airport owner Earl V. Long III is touching up an old flying friend, making it look pretty again for the city of its birth.

Other friends of his, the five-generations-in-aviation Bachus family, hired him to help make the retired plane, a Twin Beech Model 18, into a public aviation monument outside the Yard Store, just north of Old Town.

The plane will rest on the west side of Mead between Third and Central, visible from Old Town. Gary Bachus, one of the owners, said the plane will be lighted, with a flag and display. The plane lights will burn at night.

Long is a former owner of the plane, and his story is intertwined with its history. Bachus said Long knows it better than anyone.

Long’s dad started Westport Airport in a cow patch decades ago and used to fly low to shoo the cows off the runway prior to landing. A pilot hit and killed a cow while landing one night, though.

“After that we all called the airport Dead Cow,” Long said. “Some of the airport tower guys call it DCI … Dead Cow International.”

Long fixes and maintains planes with piston engines. Recently he’s been sprucing up this tough old body of aluminum and propellers and plywood that has a famous serial number still stamped on the back of the fuselage: AF-1, as in Air Force One.

This is not the big blue-and-white Air Force One, the president’s plane, which was also manufactured in Wichita and is maintained here. This is a small but mighty cargo plane with a long history.

Local aircraft lovers will recognize the plane model immediately, said Ryan Bendell, Bachus’ nephew and general manager of the Yard Store.

The family asked local aviation historians to research the plane’s history. The hardy cargo plane model is known internationally as “The Beech that built Beechcraft,” because it was such a stalwart for the military and later for civilian fliers after the war. Beech produced the plane for 32 years, starting in 1937, and manufactured 9,400, according to local aviation historians.

The AF-1 built in Wichita early in World War II never flew a president. But in 1947, the flying branch of the U.S. Army became the U.S. Air Force. The old plane, flown by military pilots as a trainer and cargo plane during the war, became the first plane assigned to the new service branch. Which is why it has that aluminum stamp on the back fuselage: AF-1.

The plane flew thousands of hours for the military and then for civilian owners, from mail carriers to freight haulers to skydivers.

It could seat two pilots and six passengers — or 12 skydivers. It has a wingspan of about 40 feet and a cruising speed of about 160 mph, Long said.

Long owned the plane many years ago, then sold it. He learned a few years later that the new owner belly-landed it one day in Indiana, wheels up, bending the propellers.

The plane sat in weeds for years. When the owner wanted to resurrect it, Long flew it to Dead Cow, piloting it to Wichita using an instrumentation panel encrusted with rust.

“When we pulled it out of the weeds we had to evict snakes,” Long said.

Then the Bachus family bought it to adorn their store.

“To put the plane on display, we settled on an unlimited budget, and we exceeded it,” Bachus said ruefully.

AF-1 is still flyable, in spite of the crash. “In two hours we could have both engines running if we wanted,” Long said.

Instead, Bendell said, AF-1 will become a permanent reminder of a chapter of aviation history.