Warbird Information Exchange

A while back at Chino, in the course of new construction, a cache of buried warbird parts and pieces was discovered. I think this was two or three years ago. Does anyone know what was found and what became of everything?

Good memory! Some goodies did turn up several years ago with the expansion of one of the runways. Most of the stuff uncovered was irony smelter slag from the immediate post-war scrappings of the airplanes on the field. The scrappers must've operated at least one small furnace on field and fed chunks of airframe into it. Molten aluminum was separated from iron screws, gears, brackets, exhaust stubs, control cable and whatever else and this was the "crud" left in the smelter.

Most of the uncovered "treasure" was irony waste and some stainless steel stuff, but all of it that I had the chance to see and pick thru had suffered the ravages of the furnace, and then had been either run over with heavy equipment and back fill buried. In addition to that abuse the parts hid in the Chino soil for five decades and it wasn't exactly the prettiest collection but darn interesting nonetheless.

I think I'd been told there were 80 dumptruck loads of the stuff uncovered during the runways expansion, and at one time some City and Sate officials had expressed great concern about the contents of these piles. They had even suggested that the warbird tailings ought to be considered "toxic waste" and removed to an authorized landfill out-of-state. That meant big bucks and they weren't at all happy about it.

Far as I can tell, this didn't happen. The soil was dumped on the corner of the airfield adjacent to what had been a nursery operation and pretty much forgotten for several years. Some of the local boys went thru it and found a couple of interesting bits and pieces... an armor seat pan or two, and some gas caps from several different types of warbirds. Rusted oddities, and really more than that. Souvenir pieces - nothing that you'd be able to hang back on an airplane.

Couple of years ago I had reason to be on the field for business and after checking with the airport authority I wandered out there to take a look in the dirt piles. By this time they were pretty well overgrown with low vegetation. I'd asked the folks at the airport authority if it was OK to take a souvenir or two, and while their official position was they didn't want anyone out there digging or making a mess or getting hurt, they considered the stuff to be nothing more than junk at that point in time. I got an odd look and a nod to take a look for a few minutes. Apparantly, it was no longer the "toxic waste" pile that had been flogged in print in the newspapers when the story originally appeared.

A buddy and I pulled out some B-24 landing gear pieces, a P-39 gear leg, some armor plate slabs (some B-24, and a couple of chunks that may be A-20), a battered P-38 exhaust segment and a bunch of other little nasty odds and ends. In all several pounds of crud as "ballast" in the back of the pickup truck that was drug home to PHX. This stuff was added to the collection of stuff found at other WWII dismantling sites and wrecks from around the country that for whatever reason I've found necessary to "bring back." In short, something else to trip over in the shop after a beer or two...

Was one field a month or so ago, and it looks like this end of the airport is now being developed. Most of the small piles are now completely gone, most liklely hauled off to another landfill.

There is still one large berm of stuff out there and of course tons of it scattered in the soil all around the airport. If you dig more than a couple of feet down just about anywhere on the airport you'll hit metal. As described above most of what's left has had the aluminum melted away from around it. There are plenty of pieces of corroded aluminum still around though and lots of buried engine parts. The aluminum was probably whatever didn't get scooped up by the end-loader to get fed into the smelter.

I have part of a P-39 canopy that was unearthed there.

Thanks, guys. Interesting answers. Too bad (as always) that there wasn't more of substance to be found. Pooner, I sent you a pm.

Michael

I remember reading something in an issue of Air Classics about a seat pan or two, and some misc. parts recovered as well.....Being a truck driver, I refuse to stay at the #$%@# hole truckstops in Ontario, so since the late 80's I've always stayed at Chino. I've spent a lot of money at Flo's! A couple of years back when the new hangers were built across the street from POF, I was kicking up the dirt where the new road was to go in, and I found a bunch of rocker covers for Jacobs round engines, and a few off of Wright 1820's....Gary