What's your best piece off a warbird

[Chris Brame]

Only Warbird piece I had was a small instrument panel (fuel control?) from a KC-135 but I gave it to Earl Reinert... I'd like to have something from a BT-13; like maybe a fin and rudder to display in my living room - How tall would the fin and rudder be?

[baxter]

i have a piece of twisted aluminum from a B-52.

[Aircraft Mech Paul]

Um,

I've been kinda holding off in putting my two cents in on this one, but does having about 1/4 of a T-6G model a friend and I have been restoring, residing at my home for the past ten years count ???

Paul

[Cindy]

A piece off the Super Corsair (tail) that I keep on my keychain. 3 - 4 pieces from an SBD that was recovered from Lake Michagan.

Used to have pieces of the Red Baron air racer and a Me-262 recovered in France, but lost those when I got unmarried.

[Tom Crawford]

I'm sorry Col I've been occupied with Hurricane Rita and have not been checking the hanger postings very closely lately. I got a PM from Tim
Landers the other day related to this string and the idea of wreckchasing in Texas sounds interesting to me. I told Tim I was raised in Northeast Louisiana during WWII and visited a few crash sites with my dad who was assigned to crash truck duties from time to time out of Selman Field. Of course I was very young and could not ride the truck but somehow dad while off duty would get word of a crash and off we'd go at night or weekends. He would lend a hand to help the crash recovery crew. I used to have all kinds of parts way back then but they've since disappeared much to my regret.
Col. I live in Southeast Texas just North of Houston.
Regards, Tom

[John-Curtiss Paul]

A piece from the Super Corsair - Kept mine when I got unmarried Cindy!

[bdk]

A piece from the Super Corsair - Kept mine when I got unmarried Cindy!

Hmmmm.... Quite a collection if you two hooked up!

[Broken-Wrench]

Nothing! I'm a aircraft salvage sell it slut!

[Jack Cook]

I forgot to add a piece of F4U-4 FAH-618 and a large hunk of a F6F-5N.

[V1VRV2]

The control column from Bf-109G (KG-13A) recovered from derilict in 1944 in Italy. Also piece of flak from my Dad's B-24 that he picked up from the floor afterv his first mission in 1944 (Ploesti). Although not a warbird part, I stiil tresure his A-2 jacket, too.

[chico]

I know fluttering into old threads late is considered bad form but... my coolest artifact is a very small piece of the skin of an F-117.

A buddy of mine does a significant amount of world travel, and likes stopping in at the various air museums of the world. On a trip to Serbia & Croatia (and whatever other former yugoslav republics are currently accessable) he visted the old national air museum. On display are pieces of NATO aircraft which were downed during the bombing campaign. Some F-16 pieces, some supposed tomahawk missle pieces and several chunks of a downed F-117A.

The piece I've got is a 1 x 1/2 inch piece of skin with a certification card that reads in both Corat? (Serbian? Regional Dialect?) and English:

Certification. Part of NATO aircraft F-117A AF 82-806 USAF 49th Fighter Wing, 8th Fighter Squadron, Holoman AB, Show down on March 27, 1999 near the village Budjanovci.

Now, how authentic is the piece? who knows. One humorous side note is that the museum also sells patches commemorating their victory. The craft had the name "Invisible" painted on its side. In Serb and English, the patch reads "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible."

[JohnH]

I have a small piece from Bob Guilford's old F4U-7 Corsair 'Blue Max' which was being used for parts for the Lone Star F4U-5 restoration, just a small torn piece of skin from a corner somewhere....some kid bought the plane from Guilford and took his girlfriend up for a spin I'm told and did a loop that wound up being too shallow...and the plane went straight into the ground. Tragic.

M

The loop was too shallow, but the rest of the story is incorrect. The pilot who crashed the airplane, Marshall Moss was in his 60s at least (there was footage of him the next night on KTLA) and was flying a volunteer for the CAF airshow at Brown Field. The ride was a reward for her work at the airshow. Guilford still owned the airplane at the time. I talked to Guilford's wife Goober a few years later and she was lamenting of course the loss of life and and how much the aircraft would have been worth later.

John

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_i ... 0954&key=1

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/corsairr ... 33693.html

Last edited by JohnH on Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Randy Haskin]

Now, how authentic is the piece? who knows. One humorous side note is that the museum also sells patches commemorating their victory. The craft had the name "Invisible" painted on its side. In Serb and English, the patch reads "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible."

Very interesting, I didn't know they were selling off pieces of that thing.

No F-117s that I know of have "Invisible" painted on them anywhere.

On a side note, you may want to treat that part with care. Depending on where it's from on the airplane, the low-observable covering they put on those things could be carcinogenic.

[TimAPNY]

Now, how authentic is the piece? who knows. One humorous side note is that the museum also sells patches commemorating their victory. The craft had the name "Invisible" painted on its side. In Serb and English, the patch reads "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible."

Very interesting, I didn't know they were selling off pieces of that thing.

No F-117s that I know of have "Invisible" painted on them anywhere.

On a side note, you may want to treat that part with care. Depending on where it's from on the airplane, the low-observable covering they put on those things could be carcinogenic.

If the F-117 is made up with the same Fiber material that the FA-18 had in it, it should also be handled with great care. slivers of that can mess you up bad. I can’t remember off hand what the material was but great care had to be taken at crash sites also because this stuff being airborne would make asbestoses look nice.

Modern aircraft had some nasty stuff in them, care should be taken when handing parts. That was overly stress in my Navy training.

[Robbie Stuart]

I got a tailhook off of something, but I don't know what. Trader Jon gave it to me years ago.
Robbie

Last edited by Robbie Stuart on Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.