Warbird Information Exchange

I remember the Erik Schilling v Dan Ford conflagration of several years ago. I spoke with Mr. Schilling on the phone several times, before he passed away, and while the conversation was about tactical maneuvers, we did touch on the conflict with Mr. Ford. One bone of contention IIRC was whether the AVG were flying P-40B's or P-40'C's. And the nub of the argument was whether the fuselage fuel tank was self sealing or not. Back in those days one version of the a/c had a "burlap-like" material on the outside of the tank as a self-sealing device. Mr. Schilling said he could turn around and look at the tank and see what was there; Mr. Ford held the opposite opinion as to whether the material was there or not. And the resolution of which version they flew seemed to hinge on that.

I also had many a conversation with Mr. Ford but not about this issue - I got my taildragger endorsement from the same lovely airport that he flew Cubs out of and we talked a lot about that field and those planes (they were the military version of the J3).

Good luck with that. Aviation History magazine had article about this event. I thought it said that all were removed. Mind you, I know this was a recent magazine, and many times it's just cut and paste from some other article. Revisionists,blah, blah......
But, given that; aircraft were scarce to come by at that time and the plentiful amount of manpower I would say that the aircraft were recovered. and there was a jar of freckle cream......

If in fact they were left there, one would have to highly doubt they would still be there after all these years! The locals may have broken them up for scrap, after the AAF sent in a crew to retreive "sensitive equipment" such as gun sights, guns, ammo. It would be nice if at least one would still be there.

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A&P/I.A., A.A.S./Aviation Maintenance technology
Warbird salvage/recovery
One day I'll get that P-40!