B-26 Marauder Picture

[coastdef]

Recently picked up this official photograph of B-26C-25-MO 41-35319 taken at Frederick Army Air Field, OK in July of 1945.



Regards,

Andy

[Mgawa]

Very good image Please tell me what the nose code mean?

Cheers

[Second Air Force]

Those are codes used by Stateside training establishments, Mgawa. There is a lot of variety of codes that a few of us have been working on "decoding" over the years, often without much success.

I wonder why that airplane ended up way out there so far from the apron? Surely not just for a portrait!

Scott

[The Inspector]

The only thing Baughers site shows is it was sent to Altus on 12/5/45. Any idea of it's combat record? 'cause it sure must have suffered @ the hands of students to be that bedraggled looking from just training. So this photo would have been taken about 5 months before it went to the smelters.

[coastdef]

Good question! The Aviation Archeology accident database show the aircraft being involved in a takeoff accident the day the picture was taken, so that explains the pictures of a well worn trainer sitting out in the grass! Database also shows another accident involving this aircraft at Great Bends, KS in August of 1943.

Regards,

Andy

I wonder why that airplane ended up way out there so far from the apron? Surely not just for a portrait!

Scott

[Mgawa]

Thank you

[Second Air Force]

Good question! The Aviation Archeology accident database show the aircraft being involved in a takeoff accident the day the picture was taken, so that explains the pictures of a well worn trainer sitting out in the grass! Database also shows another accident involving this aircraft at Great Bends, KS in August of 1943.

Yep, that makes good sense. It might just be accumulated nastiness, but the right nacelle appears to be pretty oiled-down--maybe they lost the engine and aborted early, ending up in the photo pose........

Thanks for sharing that view of the field.
Scott

[bilwor]

I wonder why the photo lists two Marauders but only shows one? And how do we know which one this is?
bill word

[tom d. friedman]

definetely looks war weary!!

[coastdef]

On the original print (and the full resolution scan I made), you can read the tail number . Don't know about the other one, this was just a single photo I picked up with some other ephemera from Frederick AAF on ebay.

Andy

I wonder why the photo lists two Marauders but only shows one? And how do we know which one this is?
bill word

[coastdef]

Just looked at the accident database for the other serial number listed; it shows an accident with on the same day as a parked aircraft (not pilot listed). I think the accident report is going to be required to figure this one out; the ramp is on the opposite side of the runway from where the aircraft in the picture ended up...

I wonder why the photo lists two Marauders but only shows one? And how do we know which one this is?
bill word

[TonyM]

It was a non-fatal take-off accident. B-26C # 41-35319 collided with the parked B-26C # 41-35773 after aborting the take-off.
Dont have the full report here in front of me, but that what the code on AAIR tells me. It is a non fatal minor accident.

TonyM.

[Second Air Force]

Using the information that Tony posted, it might be possible that aircraft were being stored/parked on the crosswind taxiway out on the southeast side of the field, hence the location where the photo was taken. I will defer to Andy as to whether Frederick followed this practice. It was not uncommon at the 2AF Heavy and Very Heavy Phase stations to park excess aircraft on the least used taxiways and even on crosswind runways from time-to-time.

Scott

[Second Air Force]

I took the liberty of enlarging the photo a bit and have a new theory:

It looks like the airplane in the photo was taking off from the north/south runway heading south. There are wheel tracks that seem to indicate this. Since the north/south runway parallels the apron, maybe the crew ended up off the runway to the apron side (that's probably when they had the run-in with the other machine) and then aborted and ended up here, facing southeast. I'd originally thought the airplane was sitting further east than it is.

Regardless, that's a nice photo of the Sub-Depot hangar and you can just make out the machine shop also.

Scott