Warbird Information Exchange

HOUMA — A full-sized model of a historic World War II aircraft has a new home today.

The TBM Avenger reproduction, whose real-life counterparts fired torpedoes and dropped bombs during the war and saw service until the 1960s, was a gift from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. That museum was given the aluminum model by the late Cmdr. Thomas Lupo, a retired naval officer and New Orleans businessman, had a California foundry build it.

It was delivered Monday via two 18-wheelers, with the fuselage on one and the wings on the other. The pieces will be kept in a Barrow Street building until display space is available.

“They gave it to us, no strings attached,” said C.J. Christ, director and curator of the Houma museum. Once a planned museum expansion is complete, the replica will be suspended from rafters.

“The casual observer cannot tell that this is a model,” Christ said. “It is impressive.”

The TBM Avenger was built by General Motors. Six of the planes saw service at Midway Island in 1942 as Allied Forces struggled to maintain a foothold in the Pacific. The aircrafts’ bomb bays could accommodate a single torpedo or up to five bombs.

The most famous Avenger pilot is former president George H.W. Bush, who was shot down in one over the Pacific in 1944.

Five Avengers were lost under mysterious circumstances during a training mission in the Bermuda Triangle on Dec. 5, 1945, a case that still intrigues conspiracy theorists.

The planes have a 54-foot wingspan and could travel at speeds of up to 300 mph. Each was equipped with a pair of .50-caliber machine guns and typically carried a pilot, gunner and radio operator.

Houma Marine Corps veteran Ulysse Fanguy, 87, hasn’t seen the model yet. But he is familiar with real TBM Avengers, which he saw in action during his WWII service.

“I haven’t seen one since the time I saw them at Midway,” Fanguy said. “It was a pretty large plane for the amount of engine on it, so it didn’t have speed but it could carry a load. The ones I saw, all they carried was a torpedo.”

Bruce Rogers, 55, a Vietnam-era veteran who serves as the museum’s model-maker, is the replica’s caretaker. He escorted it from New Orleans to Houma.

The model, Rogers said, suffered some damage in transit.

“It will have to be totally stripped down and some parts re-riveted,” he said. “We are going to have to sand out the scrapes and peeling paint and there is some bent metal.

“This was the first time I got to work on a one-on-one scale model,” he said. “Seeing that thing coming down the highway, well you don’t see an airplane coming down the highway too often. I helped load it on to the trucks. We had a 3-inch clearance to get that plane into our storage building.”

Senior Staff Writer John DeSantis can be reached at 850-1150 or john.desantis@dailycomet.com.