Warbird Barn Finds

[FastRacer5]

I'm not sure if there has been a thread specifically dedicated to the posting of pictures of "barn Finds" or recoveries, but its one of the most interesting aspects of warbird's to me. The thought of finding a P-51 fuselage in the back of a hangar forgotten about for 30 years is probably as cool as it gets for me.

I've been on the hunt for P-51 parts for 10 years buying anything and everything I can find/afford. How often does anyone else come across something cool?

[Snake45]

Dunno if this qualifies, but back in the '80s or early '90s, one nice Saturday I was tooling up I-81 to a semi-local hobby shop when a mile or so away I spotted, coming at me in the southbound lane, an airplane on a flatbed trailer. At first I thought it might have been a Navion or T-34 or something semi-interesting along those lines. As it went by, I saw it was a P-51D fuselage--very complete and intact, in natural metal finish with no paint or markings whatsoever except a large N-number on the rear fuselage, '50s-early '60s style (pre-"warbird"). I've always wondered where it came from, and where it was going.

When I got where I was going, I told the hobby shop owner what I'd just seen. Of course he didn't believe me, but I've been a Mustang fan longer than he'd been alive and I KNOW what I saw.

[Mark Allen M]

Sorry to say but in this day and age to find anything significantly "warbird" related, i.e. a fuselage sitting in a barn that is not already known to the warbird community, would be extremely rare IMO. Are there warbird type treasures still out there that are unknown to this community? perhaps, but not likely at the scale you may be thinking. Small trinkets of stuff are still all over the globe in abundance, but pretty much all the "big stuff" has been accounted for. Of course there are many a mountain, swamp, lake and some big oceans that can still yield a neat find from time to time, but even those are becoming rare as father time is starting to take full control.

never say never though.

M

[robkamm]

I think Germanys barns are were the unknown stuff is today.My dad and mom grew up there and talks of the farmers using kettenrods as tractors and finding stuff every were.

[Pogo]

When I was a young man, the fable always concerned finding a Jenny in a barn. And I'm not that dang old!



...Never did hear of anyone finding a Jenny, either.

[Forgotten Field]

Don't go looking- it's a waste of time.

I didn't find a P-51 horizontal under a brush pile....

I didn't find a Lawrence APU being used to charge batteries in a car shop....

I didn't find a CG-4A Cockpit in a backyard....

I didn't find a Helldiver gun hydraulic system at a hootenanny....

I didn't find a P-38 boom in a barn....

I didn't find an L-5 in the woods....

I didn't find a B-57 fuselage in a used car lot....

I've been doing this 20 years and it is amazing what shows up. But don't waste your time. You won't find anything- I'll find it first....

**EDIT: I didn't find a Jenny in a barn a few months ago, either....

[Obergrafeter]

Yep, don't go looking cause:

I didn't find an AT-10 in a West Texas junkyard
I didn't find a GB-2 in a boat yard
I didn't find an N2T in a shed
and I didn't find 6 T-28s' so far South in Mexico I don't think they even spoke Spanish!

Just quit looking

The amazing thing is I didn't ever find what I was looking for...............would love to find a TDR some day.

[FastRacer5]

pictures anyone ?

I know of a guy locally I've been meaning to check in with for a year or so with a large collection of T-6 and stearman parts, most of which is scratch and dent stuff from wrecked air frames but none the less worth something to the right guy. I've been looking for a right side T-6G panel for awhile.

Originally meeting him, first thing I noticed was ground looped wings and bent fuselages laying against every structure he had on his property.

[snj-5]

pictures anyone ?

I know of a guy locally I've been meaning to check in with for a year or so with a large collection of T-6 and stearman parts, most of which is scratch and dent stuff from wrecked air frames but none the less worth something to the right guy. I've been looking for a right side T-6G panel for awhile.

Originally meeting him, first thing I noticed was ground looped wings and bent fuselages laying against every structure he had on his property.

Ooohhh, care to share that source? Bela likes T-6 parts scratch & dent sales... <grins>.
There are lots of good/usable parts in damaged components, if a guy is willing the spend
the time to go after and retrieve / remove what is still usable....

I had a (nice enough) guy walk up to me at the Reno Air Races last year and tell me he wanted
to come up to my hangar in Washington State and have a look at all the T-6 parts I had for sale. Had
to politely inform him that nothing was for sale, but certain items may be available for trade (for
parts I need!).

Bela P. Havasreti

[SaxMan]

I think the key to any "barn find" is networking. When you talk to people, even people who you may not think would be "the type" to have an interest in warbirds, they might know of someone or somebody who just may have something your looking for, or they may talk to somebody and they may reach out to you. That's how I've done most of my research. Just when I thought that I was ready to "close the book" on a project, another person comes forward to add information or a perspective that has almost always never been told before.

[Mark Allen M]

Well there ya go! Your proof has been posted above not once, but twice. There's still hope for a 'never before known to exist' P-51 to still be found in grandpa's old barn somewhere. Stranger things have happened. But whatever you do, don't go looking in my garages because there's certainly NO Corsair parts in there.

[Xrayist]

Doesn't really count as a barn find, but my family moved to Santa Fe NM when my dad retired in 1972. Shortly after that he and I went on a trip north to Angel Fire NM. We went right by the local airport, and me being interested in most things that fly, talked my dad into stopping. Across a small valley on an old dirt runway was a natural finish P-51D. Couldn't make out the registration number or any other markings. It looked like it was ready to fly, but a bit dirty. The lady who managed the airport would not let us go over to take a closer look. The story she told us, and who knows if it was BS or not, was that the plane was owned by a mercenary soldier and he had flown it in with some minor trouble. He had to leave it to get fixed and chartered another plane to leave. At that time it had been there about 2 years according to her memory. Never got a chance to go back up to see if it was still there as we moved out of Santa Fe around 1980.
I now live in northern Colorado. There is a reservoir in Ft. Collins named Horsetooth Reservoir. As you drove around it on the west side there was a man who built a house on the side of a hill with a very long driveway. One day I drove by and he had a yellow SNJ/T-6 in pieces in the driveway right behind a WWII DUKW. He always had interesting stuff.

[p51]

I helped a guy pull a complete B-17/24 ball turret shell out of a barn once, back in the early 90s. He was driving down the road, happened to see the shell inside the barn door with the door hallway open (sounds crazy, but I've seen military stuff on shelves at the back of antique stores as I was driving by at highway speeds). Anyway, he only had a car and didn't wanna wait for the owner to change his mind. He called me begging to come over with my pickup truck. Lucky for him I was home at the time and lived somewhat close by.
Turned out the owner's Dad had bought it thinking he could make an aquarium out of the thing but never did anything with it. The son had no clue what the thing was and was going to give to the scrap man a week before my pal spotted the thing. I lost touch with him when I went into the Army, I have no idea where that ball is today.
That's as close as I ever got to a warbird barn find. But there's gotta be more stuff like that out there somewhere...

[DaveM2]

There was a compete Airspeed Oxford 'found' dismantled in an old ladies barn here in the nineties or so. Her husband had bought it postwar. Now well on the way to being complete once again at Subritskys, Auckland.

[Chris Brame]

As I've mentioned before, I do know of a dismantled BT-13 in a barn down in Kentucky with its wings up in the rafters...