Warbird Information Exchange

A 63-year-old mystery laps at the stony shores of Lake Ontario, involving intrigue, a dashing main character and plenty of missing pieces.

The missing pieces are probably all that’s left of “Cobra I,” a modified P-39 Airacobra, which crashed into Lake Ontario during a test flight Aug. 30, 1946.

The plane was built by Bell Aircraft Corp. in Niagara Falls and owned by Skylanes Unlimited. The highly regarded young pilot, Jack Woolams, who was killed in the crash, was testing the plane in preparation for the National Air Races in Cleveland, planned for Labor Day that year.

An outfit from Central New York — which insists on anonymity — has begun to use its submersible and side-scan sonar equipment to scope the cold, deep lake off Niagara County in hopes of locating, filming and possibly recovering some of the pieces of the plane — and, along with it, some important local history. It made its first search Labor Day weekend, but to no avail.

The searchers have enlisted the aid of Truman A. Partridge Sr., an Angola aviation artist, who is a member of the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum at HSBC Arena, as well as the Buffalo & Erie County Naval and Military Park.

Partridge is looking for eyewitnesses to the crash.

“There may be a few people out there — they’d be in their late 70s or early 80s — who were young people back then, who might be able to tell us what beach the crash happened near or how far out into the lake the crash might have taken place,” Partridge said. “We have conflicting information on the names of the beaches, and I don’t want to mention them because I want people to remember on their own.”

What Partridge does know is that Woolams, a 29-year-old from San Francisco, flew the plane from Cleveland to Niagara Falls on Aug. 29 because he was unhappy with his speed of 392 mph in qualifying heats for the race to be held in Cleveland on Labor Day. He returned to Niagara Falls to have the plane’s engine changed.

While Woolams was testing the red plane over Lake Ontario in the late afternoon of Aug. 30 — possibly at speeds of up to 400 mph — it suddenly and inexplicably crashed into the water, virtually disintegrating with a roar upon impact, Partridge said.

Woolams’ body was recovered four days later, and a few small pieces of the plane have been recovered over the years, but it is believed that most of the plane — whatever wasn’t destroyed upon impact — remains deep in the lake.

Partridge met Woolams’ widow several years ago, and she gave him newspaper clippings of the original coverage, which spanned five to six days in papers here, in Cleveland and even in New York City. She has since died.

He also contacted the forerunners of the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, as well as the Coast Guard and the National Archives for records from that fateful day. Initially, it was to no avail, but recently the National Archives sent Partridge the Coast Guard log for its Youngstown post from Aug. 30-31, 1946.

“The group from Central New York will have to wait until the weather breaks in the spring to try this again with any new information we have,” Partridge said.

Partridge, who started his career in 1954 as a technical illustrator and aviation artist with Bell Aircraft, left that job after a decade for a 30-year career as an art teacher with the Lake Shore Central School District, retiring in 1994. Now 77, he still works as a freelance aviation artist. His eye for detail has aided his restoration work on a handful of P-39s worldwide since the early 1980s.

He’s currently at work from home on two P-39 restoration projects based in Australia, relying on his vast library of blueprints, manuals, photos and other information from Bell.

“I do all of the markings on the planes, the big, national insignias, the serial numbers, the nose art and the small stencils,” he said. “The stencils are each a quarter- to a half-inch high. On the outside of the P-39 Airacobra, there are 80 different stencils in 180 different places. I can tell them what the stencils are and exactly where they should go.”

Partridge led the restoration work in 1981 on the Airacobra built in 1943 by Bell and donated by David Tallichet, which now hangs in the Naval and Military Park.

At the Ross Aerospace Museum, workers have been “conserving” another P-39, also built by Bell in Niagara Falls, which crash-landed in 1944 near Murmansk, Russia, close to the Arctic Circle. It was discovered at the bottom of a lake in 2004 by a British outfit, completely intact and with the pilot still in it. It arrived at the museum in April, and workers have been taking it apart, using an anti-corrosive treatment on its parts and putting it back together.

While the work Partridge has done has resulted in the restoration of entire planes, he knows that this new Lake Ontario project will yield only pieces of Cobra I — if they can even be found.

Partridge said the group from Central New York has said it intends to donate some if its findings to the Aerospace Museum. He noted that if they accomplish this, it will be the first display of parts of a locally made plane found in either Lake Erie or Lake Ontario.

Hugh M. Neeson, director of development for the museum, said, “If pieces are ever found, they will be part of aviation lore. I don’t know the probability of it, but finding pieces of this plane would be a tremendous part of the story. Jack Woolams was one of the premier test pilots Bell ever had. He was a dashing young man and a very confident pilot.”

Both Neeson and Partridge recalled how Lawrence D. Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft, reacted to news of Woolams’ death. Bell’s brother, Grover, was a pilot who died in 1913 from injuries suffered after a plane he was flying crashed in Petaluma, Calif.

“Larry Bell had a very special affinity for his pilots,” Neeson said. “When Jack was killed, he left a widow, Mary Margaret, and three children. Larry made provisions for Mary Margaret to be employed by Bell until she retired. That was part of the overall process of taking care of people at Bell.

“Mary Margaret became very active in aviation circles in Buffalo, and she was a firsthand source of material because of her husband’s career. Larry had that kind of care and concern for his pilots, because he knew they were risking their lives at times by pushing their planes to the limits.

“It is an absolute tribute to Western New York that 30,000 planes were built here in World War II,” he said. “It was a huge, huge contribution by Curtiss-Wright, Bell Aircraft and several others.”

Anyone with information regarding the Aug. 30, 1946, Airacobra crash into Lake Ontario is asked to contact Partridge at 549-1954 or by e-mail at trunsue1@aol.com.

niagaranews@buffnews.com