Warbird Information Exchange

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this site are the responsibility of the poster and do not reflect the views of the management.
It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 3:12 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Classic Wings Magazine WWII Naval Aviation Research Pacific Luftwaffe Resource Center
When Hollywood Ruled The Skies - Volumes 1 through 4 by Bruce Oriss


Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 506 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 34  Next
Author Message
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2009 12:06 pm 
Offline
2000+ Post Club
2000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:11 pm
Posts: 2660
Location: 16 mi. N of DFW Airport
Thanks for the update, Bill! The information from the accident reports certainly lends credence to Doc's long-standing claim that '543 was equipped with the H2X "Mickey" radar set. It would be great if we could only find a photo of '543 that really shows the radar installation.

As '543 for serving overseas, that's a definite "no" in my "humble" opinion. I have a copy of her USAAF service records, and all of her time is accounted for in Stateside activities, with most of the wartime and immediate postwar action taking place out of various airfields in Ohio, followed by lengthy service in New Jersey.

The more information we can find, the better! We should start putting together a "biography" of the life and times of 44-8543!

Cheers,

_________________
Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Lake Dallas, Republic of Texas


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2009 8:31 am 
Offline
Senior Moderator
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:22 am
Posts: 3874
Location: DFW Texas
First thing....Are you gonna try and post the pictures?!!

This is a great piece of information. The puzzle has been completed. There has been speculation for a long time that she never had a chin turret. This confirms that she did have one when she left the factory. The RADAR dome info is very good to have as well!

The stateside only information is a bit of a let down but I think I always suspected that she didn't serve overseas. Too many B-17's around for her to be brought back to the states and then modified in to a research ship.

I guess the "battle damage" she has was inflicted during the fire ant wars in Alabama!

Thanks Bill for the research and the information!

_________________
Zane Adams
There I was at 20,000 ft, upside down and out of ammunition.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Join us for the Texas Warbird Report on WarbirdRadio.com!
Image http://www.facebook.com/WarbirdRadio
Listen at http://www.warbirdradio.com


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2009 10:52 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
Yes Z, I plan on posting the pictures. I'm just having some technical difficulties that I'm working through. The accident reports were sent to me in hard copy form. I scanned them into PDF files with as high of a resolution as I could muster and now my Adobe acrobat is giving me problems. I'll see if I can get them posted tomorrow night. When are you gonna come out and give us a hand?

We're having an all hands on deck volunteer/member meeting at the museum on May 16th to try to rally the troops and get some help working on projects and fundraising. Anyone and everyone who is interested in getting involved with helping is welcome to attend. PM or email me if you want details.

BTW, Thanks to everyone for reading this thread and for all of the support.

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2009 10:34 am 
Offline
Senior Moderator
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:22 am
Posts: 3874
Location: DFW Texas
CrewDawg wrote:
When are you gonna come out and give us a hand?


Dang..no pressure there!?

When time permits Sir! (ie. I gotta have management approval :wink: )

_________________
Zane Adams
There I was at 20,000 ft, upside down and out of ammunition.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Join us for the Texas Warbird Report on WarbirdRadio.com!
Image http://www.facebook.com/WarbirdRadio
Listen at http://www.warbirdradio.com


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2009 3:19 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
No pressure Zane. As always, I'm just trying to get people to come out and visit and hopefully lend a hand or at least a dollar or two.

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2009 11:15 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
As promised, here are the pictures I recieved of Chuckie's two accidents. I apologize for the poor quality but apparently they came from microfilm, where they were tiny. The "original" reports I recieved were hard copies that I then scanned into PDF's which I then saved as JPEG's. I plan on ordering better quality photo's printed on photographic paper in the near future but here's what I have for now.

Accident #1
Note damage to chin turret.
Image

Weather Guinea Pig
Image

I wish the snow wasn't so deep, we would be able to see the radar dome.
Image

Tail wheel shoved up in the fuselage which damaged frames and stringers.
Image

Accident #2 Run in with a Jug
Image

Wing tip damage
Image

Wing Tip Damage #2
Image

And these were the good ones that we recieved!! The first accident happend right at sundown so it was dark when they took the pictures and they didn't exactly have 10 meg digital camera's back then.

I'll post some of the report info in a follow on post in a minute.

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2009 11:34 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
Here's the Form 1A for the day of the take off accident. She was overdue for her first 100 hour inspection! I'd love to meet the Crew Chief PFC Carpenter! (Lower LH corner of the form)
Image

And here's 1st. Lt. Dennison's statement as to what happened. He was the pilot-in-command at the time of the accident.
Image

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2009 6:34 am 
Offline
2000+ Post Club
2000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:57 pm
Posts: 2716
Location: St Petersburg FL, USA
Great detective work! Bit by bit filling in the holes in her history.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2009 10:15 am 
Offline
2000+ Post Club
2000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:11 pm
Posts: 2660
Location: 16 mi. N of DFW Airport
At the time of the first accident, '543 was fully equipped with turrets and guns, including the radio compartment gun (I think you can see the gun barrel protruding from the top hatch, although the photo is mighty grainy).

At the time of the second accident, the turrets and guns were definitely gone. It looks like the astrodome may have been removed from the nose and the opening faired over, although it's tough to tell for sure from the photo. We have photos of '543 on the ramp at Teterboro, and at that time she definitely did not have the astrodome installed.

Yeah, Bill, we need to scrape together the money to purchase the real photographs. We need the detail as a reference!

Cheers,

_________________
Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Lake Dallas, Republic of Texas


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2009 8:09 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
Yup, I'm all for getting better prints of the photo's. Did you notice on the one picture of the wing tip it has our S/N and also what I believe is that of the P-47 "45-837" I wonder if that P-47 is still around anywhere?

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2009 8:32 pm 
Offline
2000+ Post Club
2000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:57 pm
Posts: 2716
Location: St Petersburg FL, USA
Hmmmm, 45-837 seems to come back to a C-54 contract that was cancelled.....Just gotta love old records!!! :wink:


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun May 10, 2009 9:33 am 
Offline
3000+ Post Club
3000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:56 pm
Posts: 3442
Location: North of Texas, South of Kansas
If anyone wants to see a little in-progress report on flight control rigging I can post something in the next couple of days. We're hoping to finish checking flight control throws and recording cable tensions today. I've only found a couple of very minor squawks so far--this is a very well maintained machine.

Scott


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 10:15 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 472
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Texas
As Scott mentioned the flight control cables and travels have pretty much been checked and next will be the tail wheel and flight control lock cables, followed by the engine control cables. I can't thank Scott and Ellen enough for doing this tedious, difficult job! You guys are awesome!!

We're just about to wrap up the engine inspections and begin moving forward on repairing some of the minor dings, cracks and dents in the cowlings and one area of corrosion on the belly just forward of the radar dome hole (as we now know that it was!) in the camera well. We also have to finish inspecting the rest of the wings and fuselage and then comes the fun part, the landing gear. Rumor has it that we are going to have to do some rebushing. Just the job for our new machinist volunteer and our machine shop that he has been working on getting cleaned up and useable.

If any of our WIX friends are looking for a warbird to work on, and need more information, we are having a member/volunteer meeting this Saturday the 16th at 4:30pm at the hangar. You are more than welcome to come out and find out more about us and come and give us a hand. There is no shortage of work to be done. Just ask Second Air Force aka Scott or Dean! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks for the interest, I never thought we would be up over 3000 views! (ok, I admit it most of them were me!) :roll: :lol:

_________________
Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 7:15 pm 
Offline
3000+ Post Club
3000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:56 pm
Posts: 3442
Location: North of Texas, South of Kansas
Rigging is really a fun exercise for me, Bill--it's not nearly so tedious as all that. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Maintenance and Parts Manuals for the B-17 that make a rigger happy:

Image

Image

Fun stuff for some of us, a form of occult torture to others. :shock:

Scott


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 12:28 pm 
Offline
3000+ Post Club
3000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:56 pm
Posts: 3442
Location: North of Texas, South of Kansas
Seeing the beautiful finish on the F-86 on Sabremech's thread is a real inspiration, so I thought I'd post a couple of photos we took of the VFM Sabre this past weekend. Bill, Dean, and I opened up both gunbay access panels and a couple of other service panels and looked around, and the old girl doesn't look too bad in there.

Right gun bay:
Image

Left bay:
Image

Boresighting info on the left bay door:
Image

And since this thread is really about Chuckie, here is a cool zap sticker that is located on the rear fuselage main entry door. Also note the really neat Boeing decal above it:
Image

I've got a rigging update in the hopper--I'll try to get it posted soon.

Scott


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 506 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 34  Next

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group