P-47 Hawaii Fuselage Piece / Squadron Identification Please

[Quest Master]

Wow....lots of posts since I last looked at this thread. The P-47 section belongs to me. I personally recovered it in 1994/5. It is not a water recovery. I recovered it near Wheeler AAF Base where many WWII aircraft were scrapped after WWII. The site reviled many different aircraft parts to include the P-61 nose in my collection.

The number is an 8....not a 3. As for the picture....I found it on fold3 as an example of a P-47 in Hawaii with very similar markings as an example in hopes I can ID this fragment in the future.

[Garandguy]

Great find. I should have seen it was not a water recovery from the low corrosion. Just grasping at straws trying to find the final location of the plane my dad ditched off Bellows and was recovered in 1970-71. I'll try to locate a copy of the article & the picture and post it in a reply.

[Quest Master]

I do have a piece of a P-47N that went in just past Bellows....a place called Kipapa Gulch. I have some other pieces from a P-47 that went in just past Dillingham Field. I did a bit of crash recovery/history work in Hawaii.

[Garandguy]

While I don't have any pieces of a P47 I do have all my father's flight gear: helmets, goggles,oxygen mask, gloves A2 Leather jacket & B10 jacket with sq patch and his flight logs and travel orders and the crash report. I have all the pictures of his sq members that were on a bulletin board with their names & home towns. He told me that when Bellows was closed he found them scattered on the ready room floor and he scooped them up before they flew to Wheeler. He also told me that some of the P47's were so poorly maintained that they could not fly directly to Wheeler but had to fly around the island because they could not get enough power to gain altitude.

[Quest Master]

You should start a new thread with all of your fathers info, details and photos for everyone to enjoy.