Warbird Information Exchange

I just received a book titled "War Prizes the album" and in it are 2 photos of FHC's Oscar taken in New Zealand. The first photo shows it airborne about 3 ft. in the air which everyone says was a bump and not purposely airborne. The second picture is the Oscar on the flight line at "Warbirds Over Wanaka" Airshow. It was purchased from Alpine Fighter collection. I sure would like to know any stories about this Warbird .

Right place -right time

Currently doing an article on the type and the survivors, which will appear in the next issue...


Dave

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I was there!
Yes, there appeared to be a *cough* bump *cough* in the runway...in fact there seemed to be several....
The aircraft is not strictly airworthy - I believe it is 90% or better original and to rebuild it to full airworthy standard would mean replacing quite a bit of the original structure. It's too rare for that and I am grateful to have seen it "hop" the few times it did at Wanaka.

I seem to remember the phrase "taxied with elan!" written in Warbirds Worldwide at the time

Andy Scott

It must be hard to command an aircraft that can only be fast-taxied the way this Oscar used to be and some of the Lancasters are. If I were the pilot, I would be sorely tempted to pull back on the stick ever so slightly...

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Matt

A bit like a certain Victor bomber in the UK a couple of years back........

As I recall the Victor incident was indeed purely accidental and was accompanied by a rather abrupt return to terra firma!

I think this might be that incident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh2YSzBdWFg

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

Here's a shot that I scanned from a large collection of images the CASC has. It's apparently a shot of the FHC's Oscar:

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Keep Em' Flying,
Christopher Soltis
Dedicated to the preservation and education of The Sikorsky Memorial Airport

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Chicks Dig Warbirds.......right?

I have an interest in the type, have been collecting books, photos, information, parts and sections of airframe for years. But other than a small collection of drawings held in book form at the Australian War Memorial, I have never seen any manuals on the type. I've had no luck contacting the team that restored the FHC Ki-43-I at Wanaka or Herb Tischler of the Texas Airplane Factory that built the airworthy replicas. It's almost as if there is a conspiracy to conceal information on the type. A lot of what is published is based on the ATIU at Eagle Farm, Brisbane, Australia in late 1943/early 1944 and some of that is wrong(USAAF trying to understand IJAAF technology). If anyone can help with manuals, or contacting people who can help, I would be very grateful.

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"If that's a goddamn 'Jug' in front of me, you sure as hell better wiggle your wings." 80FS/8FG Cape Gloucester, December 1943. And the entire 41st Fighter Squadron rocked their wings.

ALWAYS LOOKING FOR P-38 PARTS

I think you were asking about the Tishler jigs at one time? According to Dave Goss he never got the tooling and said not enough of it survived to build another aircraft.


You ever find any photos of the Oscar on display in Sydney in 1945?

Dave

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Dave,

Do you know where the sections once held by TFC at Duxford went to?

Mike,
Stephen Grey's Ki-43-II project is now owned by Nobuo Harada in Japan.

DaveM2,
I believe I do have some photographs of the FHC Ki-43-II in Australia in the 1960s or 70s. PM me with an email address and I will email them to you. I once read a very good account of the Tim Wallis Ki-43-II restoration in Wanaka, it had a great deal of pertinent information in it and was written by a lady who was heavily involved in the restoration. I think her name was Barbara. Would you have any idea how to contact her or any others on the restoration team? I'm guessing thousands of photos of the original structure must have been taken before and during the project. I've always wondered what happened to them.

Dave, just out of interest, is your surname Browning (hence M2)?

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"If that's a goddamn 'Jug' in front of me, you sure as hell better wiggle your wings." 80FS/8FG Cape Gloucester, December 1943. And the entire 41st Fighter Squadron rocked their wings.

ALWAYS LOOKING FOR P-38 PARTS

I believe the TAF jigs are with Gerry in VB. It was the CAD drawings and manuals that interested me most.

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"If that's a goddamn 'Jug' in front of me, you sure as hell better wiggle your wings." 80FS/8FG Cape Gloucester, December 1943. And the entire 41st Fighter Squadron rocked their wings.

ALWAYS LOOKING FOR P-38 PARTS

No it isn't - I originally wanted DaveM (McDonald), but that was unavailable.

The FHC Oscar was restored by Jan Bullock and Doug James. I would assume all relevant material remains in the Wallis family archives, Tim's wife wrote the second part of the story which was in NZ Wings Magazine - it is online.
I have a load of photos of the FHC Oscar in the early years, however always keen to see more ( PM sent). The aircraft in Sydney was a MkII, so a different aircraft.

Jerry has the remains of the Kuril wrecks, dunno about anything else ( or for how long)

Dave

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