Warbird Information Exchange

My pick..

Easy, the first Fighter Factory P51 (The Fighter Factory in Calif.)

Mostly 'cause I'm working on the project.

-jim lee

Hmmmm,

Well, my personal picks for newly restored aircraft to flight would be:

The MAAM's P-61 Black Widow
The P82 Twin Mustang
Kermit Weeks Tempest (?)
The Beaufighter I have read about
Lone Star's PB4Y
The FW-189

These are a just few, but, I must say that the recent news about some of the BF-109's, the FW190's, and the Stuka presnt quite alot to look forward to.

Paul

- Fighter Factory Mosquito
- Roger Marley's Typhoon
- P-61 Black Widow

Beaufighter
FW190
Mosquito
Fury (biplane)
Stuka
Me110
MK22 Spitfire
Black Widow
Twin Mustang

I tallied 149 entries from all of the posts above. I wasn't strict about the top five votes so some posters got 6 or 7 votes in this count. I haven't seperated out the individual restorations of the same basic types so this is by basic designation type only:

The winner by a mile with 23 votes is the P-61. One would think based on this that the stock on any new P-61 recoveries is at an all time high.

2nd place with 13 votes, the Beaufighter.

3rd place in a tie, the Mosquito and the P-82/F-82/EF-82 posts, 9 votes

(Notice a trend yet? The twins are most popular,... or just most rare in the skies?)

4th in a tie, the FW 190s (including Doras), and the B-29s (Doc with 6 votes, Fertile Myrtle with 1)

5th tie with 6 votes: A-20s & Tempest

6th with 5 votes was the Ki-61

7th in a tie with 4 votes each was PB4Y and the various Bf 109's

and 8th in a three-way tie: Various Corsairs, the FW 189 and the Me 262.

Interesting observations: Only two each Seafires, Spitfires, P-51s, B-24J (Kermit's) and JU-87. And, not a single P-38 or P-47 eagerly awaited? Not JUST a case of familiarity breeds contempt, but maybe so in some cases?

One wonders how different the voting would have been it would be if there was a Betty, Frank, or George awaiting first flight? Or, a rare Italian, Romanian, or French fighter or such? Things surely would have been all different if a Whirlwind, Do 335, Devastator, Ju-88, or a host of others would have been "in the wing."

Surprises to me were no mention of any Vultee Vengeance (are none at all slated to fly?), and my vote for Paul Allen's B-17E being the lone one of that or any other B-17 variant.

Well, with that I'll quit. I'll check the progress again on this maybe when I get back from tomorrow's now urgent trip to California checking on some Black Widow rumors...

Good analysis Mr. Thompson..

Col. Rohr,

I was only jesting about a hasty trip to California to go P-61 hunting.

I don't personally believe there is one to be had. The former Steward Davis N5094V, 43-8357, possibly had an unconfirmed final fate, I don't remember. Possibly it was the Bob Bean plane.

The NoCal P-61 was likely the N30020 last registered to Ranchers, Inc. in Boise but lost on a fire north of Bakersfield I believe on 23 August 1963. I didn't know about that crash when I first moved to Boise in 1971. When I discovered N30020 (in a page by page search for any and all warbirds in a July 1, 1970 US Civil Aircraft Register at the Boise FAA office) I was excited. I went to the Boise street address (5010 Franklin Rd.) there listed. That office had been torn down and the address no longer existed. I went to City Hall and they took me to a dusty old file cabinet in the basement. There I found a document showing who the principles were in the company called Ranchers, Inc. At this point my hopes were still high that a real P-61 was stashed away disassembled in some Boise-area barn.
I found one of the principal partners still in the Boise phone book. That address was just a few houses down on the same street as my girlfriend. I went to that house and a woman came to the door. I asked for her husband by name. A tear or two came to her eyes and she, very broken, explained that her husband had just passed away. I learned then that his partner was flying the P-61 when it crashed while on a fire drop some 8 years previous in California. I think it was on the Tule Indian Reservation near Porterville, California.
My Dad had ties to P-61s. He was a B-17 gunner and engineer in World War II but after his discharge in 1945 he went to work for Northrop. He was on some check flights in the last P-61s built. He said on one P-61 flight over the ocean off Long Beach at war's end he witnessed cocooned P-61s being pushed off a carrier not far off the California coast. It made him and other Northrop employees aboard sick!
I don't think we knew a thing about a Bean Widow then but Bob Bean liked my dad. He let him fly the P-38L N9005R once around the patch at Blythe in 1970 before Bill Ross took delivery of it. Had he known about a P-61 then maybe Bean would have shown it to him. I have some great slides from that day at Blythe.
Dad's best friend growing up became a Northrop executive and was a key member of the F-89 design team. At one time he told us Northrop was looking into getting a P-61 (in the mid-80s I think) for restoration and had leads on some in Burma. Red tape was preventing a recovery he said.
I have seen lots of Black Widows in California while growing up but they were all the 8-legged kind. No thanks!

Ralph Ponte of Grass Valley airport told me he crashed the last F-15 Reporter. i saw pictures of the aircraft laying in the dirt gear up. By todays standards that aircraft was barely hurt. It was supposedly scrapped.

Well I thought the post was for what current restorations waiting in the wings....................if it was wanting to see ANY airplane restored to fly........wow Guess my list would be different.


1) B-47
2) Kawanishi George, "I played in one as a kid!" A/C now sits in Navy museum in fla
3) AC-119K
4) F-89
5) Wellington Bomber
6) Kingfisher
7) B-24 D
TBD Devestator
9) F2H banshee
10) B-58 Hustler

_________________
Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

I think that if someone has two He111 then they should try and produce a HE111Z, the same with a ME109Z. Also would like to see a P-61, P-59, Wellington, and Hailfax.