Warbird Information Exchange

Being new to this site, if you want to download photos, how is this achieved.
Thanks in advance.

Right click on the photo and 'save image as'.

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Sorry WIXerGreg it should have read, how can I attach a photo to this site. Never post when you are sleepy.

The easiest way to post a photo is to upload it to PHotobucket, Imgur or another hosing site and then paste the [img] link for the photo into your post.

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Easy for you to say. I will give it a try this weekend, if not I will extend my string between my bean cans and build up a head of steam. But thanks again for answer my query WIXerGreg.

If anyone needs some background on the two Vultee Vengeance aircraft being rebuilt to fly from hulks. I have notes on how they were collected.
These parts are hulks and were first collected in the mid 1960's, yet are still not static aircraft never mind flying aircraft. Flight still decade/decades away and a huge amount of money needed on unloved aircraft.

If you have trouble you can send the photos to greg @ aviationatwar.com and I can post them for you.

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A few pictures that DADE sent me to post.

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DADE would like to mention that the Photos of the Vultee Vengeance in this story came from the R.A.A.F.A. Aircraft Heritage Museum, Bullcreek, Perth, W.A.
Mr Stan Gadja,
Mr Neil Follet.


The Vultee Vengeance ended by being one of those unloved aircraft, one because it was a bomber with maintenance issues and two it was very big for a single engine aircraft, plus being obsolete as dive bombing was no longer an air forces tactic around the world, this was replaced by fast fighter/bombers that get in and out quickly near WW2s end. But thanks to an American General in the U.S.A.A.C. who had no faith in the aircraft and ordered the aircraft back to Australia from New Guinea as a second line aircraft. There was an abundance of Vultee Vengeance aircraft all over the country. No 25 Squadron (City of Perth ) R.A.A.F. at Pearce Air Force base, situated North of Perth in Western Australia, had been allocated these planes from August 1943 to January 1945. This squadron seems to have been the longest user of the Vultee Vengeance in the R.A.A.F. During the Vengeance service with this squadron, ten aircraft had been struck of charge up to 1944, all due to accidents. At the end of hostilities in the Pacific, the remaining aircraft were flown to Kalgoorlie/Boulder where thirty one aircraft were struck of charge between 1947 and 1949, but most were listed for sale on the 22/6/48, plus one other Vengeance A27-41 that had passed to the Albany Flight of the Air Training Corps, in Western Australia. Thanks goes to the web site of (ADF Serials team, R.A.A.F. Series Two) for the Vultee Vengeance information. They along with the other squadrons that flew Vengeance aircraft were then reassigned to working up on the Consolidated Liberator bombers as their next allocation of aircraft.

The Vengeance aircraft stored at Kalgoorlie/Boulder were then sold mainly to a scrap metal dealer called Bill Thomas for five pounds each, who bought nineteen aircraft on the 22nd June 1948. The engines were cut off just forward of the firewall and then dropped straight into the back of a truck, also undercarriages, plus canopies and various other parts were removed and the rest of the aircraft was cut up and dumped into a pit dug into the ground and set alight to melt down the metal. The locals in Kalgoorlie/Boulder also bought twelve of these aircraft, probably just like the Canadian farmers did for the nuts and bolts and even fuel in the tanks, or play things for their children. But unfortunately it is only speculation as the documents do not have these individual peoples reasons for buying these aircraft. By the early fifties the scrap dealer had done his job and his allocation had gone . But it is now about the twelve aircraft that we are concerned with as over the next few decades one by one they were being handed into the local scrap dealer after they were no longer needed or wanted and parts would be recovered from them for the two projects.

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Moving forward to the 1960s and 70s in Western Australia.There was a pilot and aircraft enthusiast called John Bell of Albany, Western Australia. He found that a Vultee Vengeance aircraft that had been allocated to the Albany flight of the Air Training Corps from 6/11/51 to 9/07/58 and that was A27-41, MK 1a, R.A.F., EZ925. After the needs of the Air Training Corps were met it was struck off charge on the 12/12/58 and scrapped at Albany.
The following information comes from John Bell in a letter heading of Albany Aviation, Flying School, Aircraft Hire and Charter that was sent to Mervyn W. Prime of the Aircraft Historical Group in Perth on the 25/7/71. In this letter he states that on the parts he recovered from the Albany Vengeance A27-41, he could not find any constructors number and plus a lot of plates and small items had been removed, also the same applied to the serial number. The fuselage had been chopped in half and the tail section destroyed, he obtained a replacement from Kalgoorlie, presumably the one from A27-247. Everything forward of the firewall had been removed before it reached Albany and he assumed that they are the items he located at Perth Airport (Possibly the Wright Cyclone engine that is mentioned in one document as the one he obtained from the Midland Technical College). A search of the local area in Albany in the 1960s according to John Bells recollections that most of the airframe was still laying about backyards, plus farms and after a great deal of detective work, plus physical work, he managed to collect these items. Although one document did say that the tailplane went to the Midland Technical College. These aircraft parts of A27-41 look like it could have been the first aircraft that John Bell had found. In this letter he states that if a museum is built by the Air Force Association in Perth, that he would donate his Vultee Vengeance. This is the first letter to state his wishes in 1971. He then recovered the cockpit fuselage section, plus stub wings that belonged to a Vengeance A27-247, Northrop built MK IIa , R.A.F., serial AF929 from a Kalgoorlie scrap yard in 1966. A lot of parts were missing, which included the engine, propeller, wing flaps, undercarriage, tail wheel, canopies, bomb bay doors and a long list of various other parts. But this was the first recognised serial number of any frames. Now when you talk about recovering fuselages from these Vultee Vengeances it is not what you would call fuselages, but cockpit sections of hulks not properly unbolted but cut with an axe or metal grinder and also oxy-acetylene, but you will find in all cases of the section of fuselages found, that a section from the rear gunners cockpit to the tail of these aircraft was missing. Unfortunately there are no seperate photographs of the parts of A27-41.

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In May 1971 aircraft enthusiasts called by the name of the Air Force Association, Aviation Historical Group had been formed to establish an aviation museum in Perth, Western Australia and are the forerunners of the Royal Australian Air Force Association. W.A., Aircraft Heritage Museum that is still at Bullcreek, Perth, W.A. today. This group was dedicated to preserve the diminishing heritage aircraft in Western Australia. They recovered a large amount of aircraft that were no longer flyable due to crashes, faulty glue and decaying wood and corrosion, plus in one case, the end of its military service. Donations in those years were the only way of building up a collection for a museum, as they had to charge membership fees as money was in short supply, so the people involved really had to be aircraft enthusiasts. Before this date the R.A.A.F.A. organisation had recovered a Supermarine Spitfire from Britain in 1959 and an Avro Lancaster NX-622, WU16, from the French Aeronatique Navale, Escadrille 9S, in New Caledonia in December 1962, and these two aircraft were the catalyst for this museum.
In early 1971 they had heard of the existence of the Vultee Vengeances in Albany and corresponded with John Bell about these aircraft parts and about his future intentions for the aircraft, as he always wanted it kept in a museum and preferably in Western Australia. You have to understand at this stage that this is at a time when there was was a working whaling station in Albany and John Bell was employed as a pilot spotting for these whales. He donated his Vengeance aircraft parts to the Aviation Historical Group as he had no workshop and was a one man collector and was short of time due to other commitments. Documents over the years have John Bell in his hand writing stating to the A.H.G. and others of his donation to that group. This donation happened on the 4th of December 1971. Also this is before Whaleworld in Albany opened as a museum on whaling after the whaling industry closed down in Albany in 1978. He eventually ended up in Geraldton as a pilot for the Fisherman's Co-operative there after this time.
The Aviation Historical Groups members branched out looking for the missing parts and they were quite successful. In 1972 a letter was sent to a Mr W.P. Thomas of Whippet Products, Bentley, a suburb of Perth, W.A. thanking him for the donation of the undercarriage assemblies, fairings and wheels and also the generous donation of Wright Cyclone engines on the 25th of January 1972. There is also a letter from a Mr A. Krasnostein on a company letter heading of J. Krasnostein & Co. Pty .Ltd . giving the authority for the Air Force Association to take free of charge, a few parts they require for the Vultee Vengeance fuselage, this was on the 26th of January 1972. Gaining these parts as donations from scrap dealers shows how the art of diplomacy must have been used as scrap dealers are not known to part with anything of value.

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