[BAD/OLD PICS] France Field, Canal Zone, 1948

[k5083]

I'm glad you guys liked the badder, older B-29 pics that I posted last week. I thought I would share a few more from the Kamm collection. These pics, I admit, are in rough shape, and the negatives required a lot of cleaning up even to look like this. Still, they may be of interest.

In 1948, Dick Kamm was stationed at France Field in the Panama Canal zone as a fledgling mechanic on RF-80As with the 4 TFS. Dick wrote of this posting:

The original runways at France Field were too short for most modern aircraft and we shared the longer runways belonging to Coco Solo Naval Air Station. This made the taxi time from France Field to the runways excessively long. Therefore our aircraft parking area was moved from the France Field to revetments next to the Coco Solo runway. This was great (and also distracting) for the maintenance personnel as they never knew what kind of aircraft they would see landing or taking off.

Here is what he meant. These photos are all from early 1948 at France Field/Coco Solo. Please enjoy.

1. One of 4th TFS' RF-80As, 45-8455 "Little Joe".



2. A-26 44-35734, with tail of 44-35704 to left.



3. The base's resident hack B-17 was 44-85702, which bore the name "Super Stud".



4. A PBY-6 bearing "COCO-SOLO" markings takes off.



5. P-61B 43-8314. Three or four other P-61s are lined up behind it.



6. Another P-61 launches. The serial is illegible but the buzz number appears to end in 720. "Shady Lady" written on the nose.



7. PV-2.



8. PBM climbing out.



Yes, quite distracting indeed. Hope you guys like these. To read more of Dick's recollections, see:

http://www.airandspacemuseum.org/EarlyJ ... tKramm.htm

August

[Warhawk]

These pictures are a prime example of why it's so important to post "bad" pictures. Those are stupendous pictures.

[Ztex]

Great stuff!

Love "bad" vintage stuff!

Thanks for sharing

[CWBuff]

Excellent stuff as always...

Another P-61 launches. The serial is illegible but the buzz number appears to end in 720. "Shady Lady" written on the nose.

The serial on this ship is 42-39720, making her a P-61B-15-NO. She went to reclamation at Panama, CZ on June 30th, 1949.

These are really cool... I think I came across some other France Field photos somewhere recently. If I can recall where,
I'll post a link.


Fade to Black...

[at-6b]

It was a genuine pleasure to see these excellent images of USAAF/USAF aircraft in the Canal Zone post-war. I had the honor to publish a book on the war-time and pre-war USAAF/USAAC/USAAS in the Canal Zone (Turner, "Alae Supra Canalem: Wings Over the Canal") some years ago, and have been researching the post-war period, when things took a very severe downturn, as elsewhere, very quickly.

Would sure like to get good quality copies of these some way or another.

[clipper]

Thanks to all the people who wrote and sent pix About France Field in Panama. My squadron stayed in a barracks at coco SolO AND OUR LSD -20 USS Donner docked there and took 5 days fron North Carolina . I did not know that France had so much activity then. I remember that there were many other military airfields in that CZ area. Colon was our liberty place and you had to be careful getting around there haha...Paul

[clipper]

K5083 What part of NY are you located in??? Paul/Long Is.

[clipper]

Hello K5083 I wrote a short note to u once before and asked what part of NY u are located, but never got a reply. But anyway, I did mention that I spent a short time at Coco solo back in 1957 while on Caribex, before moving up to Rio hato on the Pacific coast for 3 months. But finally I was able to transfer some pix I had on slides onto cd, and I wonder how i can send them to the site here. I am new at finally learning how to send emial pictures, soi I can do that, but mayb u can tellme how I can get them onth warbirds. Anywasy, if u have any info for me, pls let me know tks clipper Paul

[cooper9411]

k5083, thanks for the "bad" pictures. When I figure out how to post pictures here, I will!

[Steve Nelson]

Fascinating stuff..thanks for posting!

Interesting to see P-61Bs with post-1947 insignia. I didn't realize any B models made it into postwar operations..I thought only the Cs were still around by this time.

SN

[clipper]

REf the P-61 A friend just sent me a picture of a P-61 in a museum in china, so Iwill see if I can trnsfer the website to u here.....http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Ai ... 49af1b9308 I hope it works and there a few other misc pictures ther too, good luckXXX clipper

[Steve Nelson]

That pic was posted in another thread a few days ago. http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48350

Good to see she's indoors, but I really wish she could come back to the States and get a full rebuild.


SN