Airsho' Midland, Tx

[Robbie Stuart]

Hey Bill, does SNJ4 N224X still have Pensacola colors. We had her painted back when I was Maint Officer at the Cajun Wing. We had 2 other wing member owned SNJ's painted the same- Col's Joe Fortiche, & Charles "Doc" Lewis. All three were in the scheme from Pensacola 1943 (I think). I think that was the year Joe went through there in flight training. I seem to remember Joe sponsoring the paint job on N224X. Sure looked nice when we had all three up together. Chucks pics brought back some good memories from those days.
Regards
Robbie

[Old Shep]

Robbie:
I believe 224X is now with the folks in Cleveland and still has the Pensy paint scheme. I was hoping it would have been down for the show so it would have been a 4 ship fmx flight.
Bill

[Lynn Allen]

Brad, I seem to have heard about the 30' flare as well. They don't do well or like it very much.

Cheers,

Lynn

[skymstr02]

It's last flight was at Airsho' 1988 I think. It was damaged in a belly landing after a prop seal failure. That was the second prop seal failure that weekend I believe. The second seal was a last minute replacement for the "wrong way" prop side that was a last minute "find".

The accident was on the Saturday of Airsho87 in Harlingen. I always heard that the pilot flared too high on landing, stalled and smacked it into the ground. I don't remember if both gear failed on landing, but I do remember seeing it sitting on it's bell after it was removed from the runway. Seems like this was the same year the nose gear collapsed on the B-26. If not, then that was Airshow86. Somewhere I have pictures of both of them after they were broke.

Come to think of it, that might also be the year that the PBJ "Devil Dog" jumped a chock, spun around and hit a tug with the number one prop during an engine run.

I know for sure that the PBY crash was during airsho84. And the A-20 crashed at Airsho88.

I was at Harlingen when that idiot Ed Messick stalled the P-82 30 feet high on runway 17L. He stood up at the survivors party at the Officers Club and made the statement that he would pay for the repairs to the aircraft. He ended up breaking one of the main gear off and waxing out the prop blades. Prior to this, the CAF had already swapped out the props with the static display at Lackland AFB. They were the last surviving Aeromatic blades like that in the world.

Oz Parrish was the crew chief on "Devil Dog" and was at the controls when the Dog jumped the chocks. He was troubleshooting a miss in the number one engine at the time. The tug was a Hobart tug with a GPU built in. It had a Chrysler 426 Hemi in it with a 1200 amp generator. I delivered it earlier in the year, it was on loan.