I supplied those FG-1D Bureau Numbers to Brian O'Farrell a few years back, after I told him a tale I had heard from an old time warbird restorer on the East Coast who shared a very interesting story with me back in the mid-1980s.
This old time warbird guy had travelled to El Salvador a couple of years earlier and swore that he spotted a row of derelict Corsairs sitting in an old scrapyard south of San Salvador. Being that this person was the type who normally would have made a serious effort to recover such items, I had some doubt as to the factuality of his story since he basically walked away and never returned to see about acquiring them.
I guess it was about 2006 or so when I shared this twenty year-old story with Brian O'Farrell. Come to find out, Brian was born and raised in San Salvador, and he took a very special interest in the tale! I was prompted to go back to the person who had originally told me about the planes and get some specific instructions to the scrap yard where he had spotted them. To my surprise, the old timer recited some fairly specific instructions on where to find the scrap yard. I relayed that info to Brian and he was immediately on a plane back to the "home country" to see what he could discover. I felt a little apprehensive, since I felt it was almost inevitable that he wouldn't find anything.
A few weeks later I received a call from Brian. He was on the road back to the States with his final truckload of Corsair parts! He had managed to locate the scrap yard and confirmed that this was the location where the remainder of the derelict FAS Corsairs had been hauled away after leaving the Ilopango boneyard in the 1970s. The planes had actually sat undisturbed within the confines of the scrapper's compound for about 15 years, and weren't actually broken up until the early 1990s! The scrap dealer told Brian he had seen the Black Sheep Squadron TV series and knew what the Corsairs were of course, but obviously had no idea of their value. He had broken up a million dollars worth of salvageable airframes simply to make more room in the salvage yard for more scrap! This has since become of the biggest regrets of my life - not sharing this old timer's story during those critical years when these planes were still whole and salvageable.
Though they were substantially broken up, the remains of the airframes all appeared to still present at the site, and O'Farrell scored them for little to nothing. It took more than one trip to get the stuff home, but he made it happen like a champ. I imagine the only real value that remains amongst the busted up junk are the various unique fittings and castings, etc still present in the wreckage...and of course the data plate identities! I don't believe Brian was able to locate and/or salvage any of the original data plates, thus the reason I supplied him with the Bureau Numbers of the planes that we knew had been scrapped.
So for those who didn't know, that's how we wrapped up the final chapter in the history of the FAS Corsairs!
_________________
Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.comhttp://www.robmears.com
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