Shelby County School of Aeronautics - Late 1945

[Mark Nankivil]

Greetings All -

A recent donation to our Museum included a photo album in which the following photos were kept. It appears the visit was sometime in late '45 - would think gas rationing and travel in general improved immediately with the end of the war.

Shelby County School of Aeronautics was located in Whitehaven, TN which is now a close in suburb of Memphis, just West of the International Airport. A little more rural back when as you can see in the photos...

First off, a few B-26A Marauders...





and what looks like a A-20 fuselage along with a B-26 and a Rearwin fuselage:





A P-39:





Curtiss O-52 Owls, Vultee BT-13s and North American O-47s:













An A-20 and a Lend-Lease Boston III:







A DC-2 ( I think):



A Lightning I:







A British Lend-Lease Ventura and a PV-1:





My favorites of the whole set - P-43 Lancers and early P-47 razorbacks:











And some overall shots. The A6M Zero in the foreground surprised me - can't imagine that many Zeros were brought back to the States and ended up in a school.





What appears to be a Ju-88 engine nacelle/Jumo 211:



Well, there you have it. Would be very interested to find out more about the school if anyone would have some leads. There's not much to Google and I do plan on contacting some of the local history societies to see if that might lead to more info and photos.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[Stoney]

Shame, you left out the AT-6

[slinky]

Mark, what a great set of pix!!!! They had a treasure trove of great aircraft!! I'm with you, Love the P-43s and the P-47s!!!!

[Dan Jones]

Man... that is just depressing!

[Mark Nankivil]

Sorry Stoney, no pic of it!

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[AG pilot]

Simply amazing.....thanks for posting them!

[JDK]

Great set! To add a bit - the presumed A-20 fuselage rolled on its side is definitely an a A-20 / Boston fuselage, the ventral gun position cutout is distinctive, and evident in one of the other Boston / A-20 shots.

The lend-lease Boston AL321 would almost certainly be one of a batch allocated to the RAF but taken over by the USAAC on the American entry to the war, and thus never got to Commonwealth service. There's a few famous colour shots of Bostons in the AL range with British style disruptive camouflage in US service.

There's an SBD Dauntless tail in the Lightning 1 shot.

The DC-2, is indeed (or a US military version).

Your 'Rearwin' is a Stinson L-5, no?

I've just had a look through Phil Butler's 'War Prizes' for you, and there were numerous Mitsubishi Zeros which made it to the US but were struck off, or reallocated eventually, and the paperwork trail goes cold; I'd guess it could be one of just under a dozen possible examples.

Be interested if you get any more info.

Regards,

[lmritger]

Imagine if someone back then had had even the slightest inkling that this group of aircraft could collectively be worth tens of millions of dollars in just 70 years...

...but times were different then.

Great photos, thank you for sharing them!

Lynn

[Steve Nelson]

But then it's sort of a temporal catch-22. The only reason they're worth so much now, is because they were considered worthless and scrapped en masse back then...

Great bunch of pictures! The Havoc and Marauder have always been a couple of my favorites. I was lucky enough to see Weeks' Marauder fly once..I hope I get to see a Havoc in the air someday.

SN

[Eric Presten]

The Rearwin/L-5 is a civilian Stinson 10a or HW-75.

[Stoney]

The AT-6 is in the first P-47 pix with no engine facing the camera.

[zorro7]

Mark:

Indeed a great set of pictures. Any idea of the final days of the metal B-26 Marauder with the Shelby School of Aeronautics?? Do the School of Aeronautics still existin TN??

Would love to know that particular serial number!

Tks in advance

[Chris Brame]

As your typical anorak I ran all the readable USAAC/F serials through Baugher:
B-26 40-1537
O-47A 37-307
O-52 40-2864
O-52 40-2875
BT-13 40-896
P-43A 41-31487
... and the only info that came up was that the second O-52 had a landing accident in Texas in '42 (like most other Owls!).

[Fandango]

My great grandfather, Joseph Alexander Jackson (@ b. 1876 - 1944) was employed by the Whitehaven School of Aeronautics and I was interested in learning more about it and/or inquiring about additional photos available from that period. Thanks much!

[CoastieJohn]

How can one tell if an airframe was a lend-lease airframe? Are there special markings?