Hidden warbirds : the epic stories of finding, recovering, and rebuilding WWII's lost aircraft PDF
Preview Hidden warbirds : the epic stories of finding, recovering, and rebuilding WWII's lost aircraft
HIDDEN WARBIRDS The Epic Stories of Finding, Recovering, and Rebuilding WWII’s Lost Aircraft Nicholas A. Veronico Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: How the Hunt for Hidden Warbirds Has Evolved Part One: Up from Under Water Two of the Rarest: Side-by-Side Helldiver and Dauntless Restorations The Last Vindicator: SB2U-2 up from Lake Michigan Two Navy Crosses in SBD-2 BuNo 2106 Part Two: In from the Jungle B-17E Swamp Ghost and Its Long Road Home Recovering the Mount Cyclops P-61 Black Widow Bringing Out a Betty, a Judy, a Tony, and a Zero Big Island B-18 in Situ Part Three: The Frozen North P-38 Glacier Girl Million Dollar Valley Marauders Alaskan Liberators: One in Place, One Recovered Part Four: Lucky Finds: Rare Warbirds in Unusual Places Mustang in a Garage: P-51D (F-6D) Lil Margaret Navy Harpoon on a Grass Strip Some Assembly Required: B-17E/XC-108 Desert Rat Part Five: Recovering the Big Fleets: Squadrons Return Rescued from a Desert Boneyard: The B-29s of China Lake Corsairs Recovered from Honduras Latin American Mustangs Fuel the Warbird Movement Epilogue: They’re Still Out There . . . Bibliography and Suggested Reading Internet Resources Index Introduction How the Hunt for Hidden Warbirds Has Evolved By the end of June 1946, Storage Depot 41 at Kingman, Arizona, was home to 5,553 aircraft. Of the more than eighteen thousand B-24 Liberators built during the war, today only two are regularly flown with fifteen surviving aircraft plus some nose sections. All of the warbirds at Kingman were gone by the fall of 1948. They’re out there . . . you just need to know where to look. Missing fighters with names like Lightning and Warhawk; bombers large and small—Havoc, Marauder, Flying Fortress, and Liberator; and navy carrier planes—Hellcats, Wildcats, and Dauntlesses; all are scattered across the former battlegrounds of World War II. Friend and foe alike, the hands of fate have also hidden Hurricanes and Spitfires, Stukas and Zeros, and dozens of other types. They sit in humid swamps and jungles, on sweltering desert hard scapes, submerged under water, or buried under tons of ice. Even the location names sound remote and foreboding; places like Dobodura, Saidor, Narsarsuaq, and the Calanshio Sand Sea. RF-6C-10-NT 44-10911 was sold at Kingman to aircraft dealer Lee Cameron and dismantled. William T. Larkins The aircraft was transported to Los Angeles where it was rebuilt and sold, becoming N5528N Thunderbird. The plane competed with pilot Joe DeBona at the controls with sponsorship from the actor Jimmy Stewart. Burke- Smith Studios At the end of World War II, the air force and navy had gathered aircraft significant to each service’s history, including enemy aircraft. Dozens of the collection’s aircraft were stored in the former C-54 plant at Park Ridge, Illinois, and when the space was needed to build C-119 Flying Boxcars for the Korean War, the collection was evicted. Most of the aircraft were dismantled, including this P-38, and shipped to Silver Hill, Maryland, for storage. National Archives via A. Kevin Grantham In the field, what might be impossible-to-overcome obstacles to many would- be explorers are mere hurdles to others. Insects, reptiles, snakes, sharks, hostile natives, and poor or primitive living conditions are only some of the problems facing aircraft recovery teams. Imagine trying to dismantle a 65,000-pound B-17 sitting in a swamp with the nearest hard ground a four-or five-mile trek through razor-sharp Kunai grass that grows taller than most men. Once out of the swamp and on terra firma, the aircraft then has to be transported half a world away before restoration work can begin. The cost of recovering a World War II warbird is beyond the reach of the average aviation enthusiast. But that’s not to say that there are not warbirds closer to home that are awaiting discovery. Closer to home they are in lakes, hidden in the trees, in hangars, garages, and sitting on abandoned airfields. They are out there . . . When Warbirds Were a Dime a Dozen The United States had built more than three hundred thousand planes between 1941 and 1945. At the close of World War II, the military had more than twenty- 1941 and 1945. At the close of World War II, the military had more than twenty- five thousand aircraft that were surplus to its postwar needs. The planes were parked on fields across the United States, Europe, and islands in the Pacific. Learning from its mistakes after World War I, the U.S. government was careful not to flood the market with surplus aircraft and sold a relatively few tactical aircraft types to civilian operators. It did, however, release huge amounts of single-and multi-engine trainers. The remaining tactical aircraft were scrapped, including more than twenty-one thousand sold in a bulk sale in June 1946. These aircraft were parked at Kingman, Arizona; Walnut Ridge, Arkansas; Ontario, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Clinton, Oklahoma. Once the sale had concluded, the scrapping contractors were given from eighteen to twenty- four months to clear the fields. America’s aerial armada, the likes of which the world has not seen since 1945, was reduced to aluminum ingots to feed the demands of the postwar economy. A number of warbirds sat unnoticed into the late 1950s and early 1960s at trade schools such as the Northrop Technical Institute near Los Angeles’ Mines Field (today’s Los Angeles International Airport). There is a B-24M, B-25H, and P-61 in the foreground with a training glider, C-78, and BT-13 facing the hangar. In between the hangars can be seen a P-61 fuselage and center section and an AT-6. Gerald Balzer Collection Ed Maloney from The Air Museum-Planes of Fame rescued B-17F 42-3374 from the MGM film studio when it was divesting itself of everything on Backlot Number Five. Of the World War II fighters that escaped the scrappers’ torch, most were sold to pilots interested in competing in the National Air Races at Cleveland, Ohio. The races had been held Labor Day weekend in the years leading up to World War II. The last prewar race was held in 1939, as conflict in Europe canceled the 1940 air races and those for the duration of the war. While the United States demobilized from World War II, the announcement was made that the National Air Races would resume in 1946. Pilots with the financial wherewithal could purchase a surplus P-38, P-39 or P-40 for $1,250, and a P-51 for $3,500. Once title was acquired, the fighters were flown home and stripped of all military equipment. Former World War II fighters were involved in two different types of competition at the 1946 National Air Races—cross-country and closed-course. The cross-country race, sponsored by the Bendix Company and known as the Bendix Trophy Race, started at Van Nuys, California (a Los Angeles suburb), and ended at the race site in Cleveland. Twenty-two aircraft showed up to race in the cross-country dash, including fourteen Lockheed P-38s, four North American P-51s, a pair of Bell P-63s, one Goodyear FG-1D Corsair, and a Douglas A-26. Paul Mantz won the race in a P-51C Mustang with an average speed of 435.50 mph—an unheard of speed when compared to those of the prewar racers. The closed-course race consisted of ten laps of a thirty-mile course laid out over the suburbs of Cleveland. The field for the 1946 race consisted of one P-38
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