Hidden warbirds : the epic stories of finding, recovering, and rebuilding WWII's lost aircraft

299 Pages·2013·11.79 MB·English

by  Veronico

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