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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 7:38 pm 
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A group of members from the Aviation Historical Group, who were Messrs Mervyn Prime, Fred Cherry and Geoff Goodall departed Perth for Kalgoorlie between late July and early August 1971 to follow up leads concerning Vengeance parts. The distance from Perth to Kalgoorlie is not a packed lunch trip, but a two to three day adventure.They came across in a smelting yard in Hay Street, a section of the rear cockpit area, with a gun-mount and foot controls, plus armour plating. They then moved to another yard in Forrest Street owned by Krasnostein & Co, to find two fuselage centre sections, one with both wing stubs and the other only the port wing stub, plus a port wing and a panel section from the tail cone area. These fuselage parts had been from two aircraft bought by a Mr Sam Sheperdson in 1948, who had left them on a site owned by Mr Vic Fletcher who later claimed them as they were on his land over a number of years and then sold them in 1964 to the scrap dealer at that time, called Warman Pty. Ltd, who was then taken over by Krasnostein. An engine with its engine mounts, plus fuel tank was found in a yard off Netherscott Street. Two people then related to the group that they had bought three aircraft each at the sales in 1948, but they had been scrapped long before their visit. On a visit to a disused pig farm they found a port wing and various panels and wing ribs and a pilots seat. On a later visit before heading back to Perth they visited this farm and filled up their car with small Vengeance parts and left a note asking that the wing remain there as they would return later in the year.
A well known active member of the A.H.G. called Stan Gadja, made a trip with a car and trailer and called at the scrapyard of Mr Thomas at Bentley, Perth. On this visit he recovered a Vengeance forward cockpit section with half a bomb bay door on each side and a Vengeance wheel, plus an engine panel that was painted brown with an '' nose art '' of an Eagle with outstretched wings gripping a yellow diving bomb in its talons. He took these parts to his home at that time of Lancelin and stored them there, before later dropping them at the R.A.A.F.A. storage shed except for the cockpit section that remained at Lancelin. This storage problem will keep popping up as no museum had been built and members had to resort to storing aircraft parts at their own home premises, with even aircraft being restored in members garages and even John Bell looked after the Aircraft parts he had donated in Albany for a few years.
Now two possibly three Wright Cyclone aircraft engines were collected by other AHG members from the scrap yards. While another had been picked up from a council tip. How many of these engines in total cannot be found in the documents. One engine was still attached to the engine bearer and was stored vertically, while the other engine had cowl ring and panels. You will find one of the recovered engines stands out in photographs over the decades due to its non standard camouflage on the cowling ring. This engine was restored to static display condition by various groups of volunteers in Perth. It was displayed at Perth Airport as a museum promotional engine, then moved to Whaleworld in Albany, then moved back to the Museum in perth during the ownership issues and is still on display at the Aircraft Heritage Museum in 2018 along with another engine with no cowling. No original propellers were ever found, but a fibre glass propeller had been made up for the display engine and a DC-3 one was later found so that it could be fitted on the static aircraft when it was finished to go on display.
Unfortunately as Stans employment meant that he had to move away from Lancelin, he stored the forward cockpit section at a friends premises and on returning two years later found it along with some other parts of aircraft had gone missing and never found again. On behalf of the AHG group Stan was loaned a Dodge truck free of charge by his friends father and with his friend, they went on a trip to Kalgoorlie, he collected a fuselage section and inner wing stubs that had to have the bolts cut off by oxy-acetylene as they could not be unbolted, this occurred at the Simms Metal Yard. The fuselage and stub wings were taken to Lancelin, again for storage and later in 1978 at the same time as the cockpit section that was moved to the friends home, the Kalgoorlie fuselage and stub wings were moved to the Air Force Association shed at Bullcreek, Perth. No other Vengeance parts remained at Lancelin after this year and it was never an original site for scrapped aircraft only a storage place. Another active member called Geoff Goodall advised Mervyn W. Prime the A.H.G. research officer that this fuselage was of Vengeance A27-232. MK2A. R.A.F. serial AN555. But how this serial number was found is not explained.


Last edited by DADE on Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 7:53 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:03 pm 
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From the date in 1971 when John Bell donated the Vengeance it had been stored at various places in Albany, plus the whaling station aircraft hangar at the airport was mentioned in one document, but the whaling station closed in 1978 and this was the same year that the Vengeance aircraft parts were brought to Perth by truck and stored at the Air Force Association shed.
Another two active members were Stuart Kirkham and Dave Saunders who travelled to Kalgoorlie in May and another trip in June 1986 to search for Vengeance parts. Various small parts and panels were recovered by Stuart and Dave, but no detailed description of these parts has been unfortunately made of what had been collected. Dave Saunders also refurbished some small items back in Perth but only because the budget was also small at that time too.
On thinking that the only other Vultee Vengeance in the world at Camden, New South Wales, was a complete aircraft and they may have spare parts. A letter was sent to Harold Thomas, but a surprise message came back to them, that advised that he had nothing, but he needed parts himself to finish off his aircraft and could the A.H.G. help. His list was a rudder, a tail cone including the fairing below the rudder, wing to fuselage fairings, navigation light perspex ,armour glass behind main windscreen, gill cowl hydraulic cylinder, tail wheel & axle, tail wheel components and flap shaft. Because the A.H.G. group had various duplicate parts they gave the tail wheel parts Harold needed, which was item 21 part no 72/46033 support assembly, and a tail wheel hub. One item was not available as a spare, a link assembly and that was allowed to be borrowed to be fabricated by the Camden Museum Of Aviation. Correspondence with Camden Museum of Aviation was between 1972 and 73. Closer to home a Vengeance oil cooler had been donated to the A.H.G. from a G.J. Clark in Como,Perth during 1976 and this is still being used in 2018 on a running Armstrong Whitworth Cheetah engine at the museum.
During this time offers came from interested people to the A.H.G. to either buy the Vengeance or swap it for a De Havilland Devon/Dove and in an interesting letter from John Bell in 1987, concerning a swap for the Vought Kingfisher held at Pearce Dunns museum in Mildura, Victoria. Pearce Dunn had wanted either P-40 wings or the Vultee Vengeance for the Kingfisher. These were all rejected as even though work on the Vengeance had taken a back seat to other aircraft and museum buildings, it was still accepted that they would still like to rebuild this aircraft eventually.
At sometime after the whaling station had closed as a working factory, an organisation called Jaycees Community Foundation. (Inc) got involved to open the whaling station as a museum, and a hangar was built to display the spotting planes and the by then Vought Kingfisher that John Bell had eventually bought from Pearce Dunn at Mildura, Victoria and the Consolidated Catalina that ended up by being owned by the foundation. This ownership of the catalina is mentioned twice in documents by the people involved in the foundation, who also leased what was now called Whaleworld based on the old whaling station premises, the aircraft museum hangar has also been called the Malcolm Green Aircraft Museum.
John Bell sent letters in 1987 requesting, that could he at his own expense collect the fuselage so that he could rebuild it in Albany and return it on finishing it to the museum in Perth as he was a member of the A.H.G. As the A.H.G. in Perth had so many projects at that time as another document by Mervyn Prime said that they had 18 aircraft and 50 engines, they accepted the offer that the fuselage would return to Albany to be rebuilt and the wings and tail plane would remain in Perth to be rebuilt by Philip Rose ( Ex Supermarine employee ) and this happened, with the wings being rebuilt in the workshop in Bullcreek, Perth, for static display.
In 1987 a set of only one lot of four Vultee Vengeance canopies is mentioned, that had been found by a A.H.G. member and these were sent on to John Bell at Albany for the fuselage rebuild. You can find in these documents that although three aircraft are involved, only enough parts that would build one static aircraft were usually recovered and only where there was damaged fuselage or tails, plus anything of a mechanical nature, like undercarriages or the engines, did extra parts need recovering. A search for other Vengeance items due to the fact that the places at Kalgoorlie/Boulder and Coolgardie had dried up for parts.The A.H.G. had to go inter state in Australia and were able to exchange a Transavia Airtruck aircraft that had crashed in Western Australia for some parts that included a Vultee Vengeance windscreen with frame and engine mount for this aircraft with Moorabin Air Museum in 1993, also John Bell on his travels to the eastern states of Australia while looking for parts for his Kingfisher, he managed to find for the Vengeance a rudder and gun cupola donated from Ian Whitney in Melbourne, plus from Pearce Dunn at Mildura, he received what was called a few Vultee items that included a rear seat with the mechanism for raising and swivelling. He stated that he hoped to have the fuselage at Albany finished by 1989 and returned to Perth, so that he could progress on to the Kingfisher.


Last edited by DADE on Sun Sep 02, 2018 4:25 am, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:26 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:35 pm 
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As in all volunteer groups you will find the three disses, disharmony, disunity and disappointment over the years and it was no different to the A.H.G. when a few members broke away to start another museum group, so that this diluted the amount of volunteers that were active across all the aircraft that had been collected. Plus in one document you find a disclosure that would even be relevant today that most volunteers had an active aircraft attention span that only lasted three years and only a few carried on for decades, also natural causes diluted the membership.
During this time various locations for the museum in Perth were looked at but dismissed for a variety of reasons. Eventually land at Bullcreek, Perth, was offered and the first building was built in 1979 thanks to a contribution from the 150th Anniversary W.A. celebrations and another bigger building to the North of the first building was constructed in 1983 to take the bigger planes and that allowed the corrosion to be removed from the aircraft that had been outside for decades. Everyone that has a museum knows that construction of museum buildings is just possibly the easiest part, it is fitting it out with a display that can give you a revenue that is the hard part.The Aviation Museum of Western Australia, went on to order in 1991 four duplicate technical manuals for the rebuild of the Vultee Vengeance from the National Air and Space Museum, in the U.S.A. Two of these manuals are still in the library today.
John Bell who was now the manager at the Whaleworld museum, asked for the rest of the Vengeance parts to display the aircraft as a more complete aircraft at that location in Albany. He went on to explain, as he had donated the Vengeance aircraft parts to the R.A.A.F.A. with the knowledge that a museum was going to be built in Perth but still the plane at Perth had not been finished and displayed, he and his directors would like the aircraft parts back. But by then along with his Vengeance aircraft parts the volunteers at R.A.A.F.A. had collected their aircraft parts, it was then agreed that the aircraft parts could return on a loan basis only (And it was a loan only) and the rest of the parts held in Perth, were transported to Albany in 1992, this was even though the fuselage had still not been finished by him at that time. Unfortunately John Bell passed away along with one custom agent, one federal police officer and one local police officer in a tragic aircraft accident while on a charter in 1996.
Later a delegation from the museum in Perth travelled to Albany to see John Bells widow Mrs Jill Bell concerning the ownership of the Vengeance parts and a friendly meeting was stated as the outcome in documents. Between this time and in 2004 the management at Whaleworld decided that they needed the hangar that the aircraft were exhibited in. An article appeared in the Albany Advertiser of 9th of March 2004 concerning the sale of two of the WW2 aircraft and finalising details for the 3rd WW2 aircraft as there was an uncertainty as stated over the ownership of the Vultee. After producing documents that showed the Vengeance had been donated to the R.A.A.F.A museum in 1971, plus the various Vengeance parts gathered by the AHG members, and that it had been loaned back to Albany on request by John Bell. They had correspondence back and forward, all parties then realised that taking the legal route would be very expensive for all concerned and personally I do not think that R.A.A.F.A wanted to go to court against Mrs Jill Bell, as John Bell was a life member of the R.A.A.F.A. Aviation Museum of Western Australia, and well respected by former colleagues and enthusiasts in Australia and New Zealand. A three way compromise was achieved. The Vultee Vengeance aircraft parts would go to Precision Aerospace at Wangaratta to be used as pattern/copy aircraft parts and was signed by Murray Griffiths. Mrs Jill Bell would receive a financial benefit for the use of these parts and the CEO of R.A.A.F.A. in Perth, a Mr Bob Bunney then signed that they would get the returned Vengeance pattern/copy aircraft parts and would pay for the transportation of parts back to Perth at the end of their use by Murray Griffith. From 2004 until 2011 the Vengeance parts that were to be used as a pattern/copy remained at Wangaratta and nothing had happened to them as a pattern/copy to build an aircraft. Again an unfortunate thing happened and the well respected Murray Griffith passed away during the year of 2011.
After an amount of years these aircraft parts have now been found to have been moved to New South Wales, Australia, where the last known location was with a Mr Richard Greinert who is located at the HARS, Albion Park premises. There is a good possibility that they will finish the rebuild as they have experience on Republic P-47 Thunderbolt rebuilds and also the GAF/Bristol Beaufighter rebuilds. The fact that many parts will have to be constructed to make them fly and also the workshop that will be rebuilding them needs to be similar to a Vultee or Northrop Factory to achieve it. The search for Vengeance parts world wide would I think be an unlikely source, but I could be wrong. The chances of this rebuild happening look good, but only possibly after ten maybe twenty years and a vast amount of money from a well to do person will be needed. But it is now about fifty odd years since these parts have initially been recovered and still they are just projects.Who ever has the intention to have these aircraft rebuilt to fly, then I hope they have a line of succession in their family to see these projects finished.


Last edited by DADE on Sun Sep 23, 2018 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:52 pm 
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So what recognition or anything of substance did the R.A.A.F.A. Aircraft Heritage Museum and volunteers achieve from the Vultee Vengeance aircraft parts that they recovered around W.A. and inter state, which was cockpit canopies, engines, engine bearers, undercarriages, fairings, wheels, cockpit fuselage, windscreen and mounting, numerous panels, tail wheel parts, bomb bay doors and actuators and the work on various parts and wings. Exactly nothing until this article. Well the moral of this story is if you have collected aircraft parts, keep them close to you and not let them out of your sight as you will find unlike a boomerang they will not return to you. I hope this clears up the misrepresentation about who collected these aircraft parts and who owned them in future posts.

The significance to Western Australia of the Vengeance is due to a wartime accident when a Pilot and his Observer/Navigator had parachuted from their Vultee Vengeance that had run out of fuel on a practice navigational flight over Western Australia. Although the pilot survived and was recovered days later, the Observer/Navigator Flt/Sgt C.L. King was never found after extensive searches in the bush that continued after the war, including a search by his father and still today he has never been found. It was thought he was knocked out and was unable to release his parachute. He only has a cairn monument in an isolated spot in outback Western Australia to remind us.


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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:09 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:56 pm 
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DADE,

Thanks for posting the narrative...enjoyable reading! And thanks WIXerGreg for help with the pics!

Kudos to all the Antipodean scroungers who, over the years, accumulated the Vengeance bits that do remain. :drink3:

One small correction: The OS2U Kingfisher is a Vought product rather than Curtiss.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:59 pm 
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OOOOOOOPS


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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:12 am 
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That's why I am still a corporal. Dan K


Last edited by DADE on Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 1:05 am 
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DADE wrote:
That's why I am still a CORPORAL. Dan K




Don't let that slow you down!

"All hail" to the mighty Vengeance...she deserves more love than she seems to receive.




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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:03 pm 
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A background concerning John Bell.
Albany pilot John Bell, Australian Federal Police agent Stephen Hill, Customs officer Peter Siep and Albany Sen Const Charlie Scott were killed during a drug surveillance flight on March 13, 1996, when their plane crashed at Manypeaks.
The men were investigating drums of an unknown substance found washed up on the beach when their Cessna 377 stalled and crashed, an air safety report found. All three officers were based in Albany while Mr Bell, 61, was a former whale spotter employed by the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company.
The experienced pilot was well known for his rescue of whale chaser skipper Ches Stubbs after his leg was torn off after being caught in a harpoon rope in 1964. John had landed in rough seas to pick up Ches, but there was a struggle to take off and after removing the whale chasers engineer to reduce weight and the chaser turning in circles to flatten some waves, he managed to take off and save the skippers life.
He had rescued a missing man at Cheynes Beach only a week before his death in 1996. This man was a tourist who got swept off some rocks into the sea. John Bell managed to spot him and arrange a boat to pick him up. The spot that the tourist went into the sea is a very dangerous spot and various other people have been washed into the sea. The last person was a tourist who died at this spot in 2018 doing the same thing as the man in 1996. A plaque is mounted on the rocks at this site naming John Bell.


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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:43 pm 
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After I posted the complete and 100% accurate story concerning the recovery of the two Vultee Vengeance aircraft parts of numerous decades. I expected some feed back either positive or negative, but only received one very positive one from Dan K. I wondered if it was all too much to take in from people that look at this particular subject. A Smilie face or a Scowl would at least be enough.


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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:53 pm 
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I was fascinated by the story. Being from Perth and having lived in Kalgoorlie briefly as a kid (371 boring miles from Perth as I remember) I read every word and felt appreciation at the effort and determination getting the bits together. It is sad that they have escaped the state.

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 Post subject: Re: Vultee Vengeance
PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:03 pm 
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Thanks Rick65 for your kind reply. It was good that you can testify to the not a packed lunch trip. Yes I come from Perth too.

Yes there is an ownership issue. A pity that no due diligence was done on these parts.
There is a document that gives details to the facts of ownership.


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