Evergreen Collection is in the news again

[astixjr]

Within 24 hours of Mike Wright arriving at Marana with the P-38, Del Smith ordered the plane to the paint stripping facility on base. The Air Center had a strip and paint area that could throw an army of people at a 747 and have it stripped, cleaned, primed, and re painted in less than 72 hours. They used to say 48 hour turn around on a 747 but I never saw one actually done that quickly. In any event, I was sitting in my office about three hours later when one of the guys walked in, I think it was Rick Barter, and said, hey, you better come down to the strip rack and look at the P-38. When I got down there I was pretty shocked. The crew had managed to tape, mask, and strip the plane in less than three hours. The paint stripper made short work of the paint and The high pressure water guns had dislodged dozens of dinner plate size 1/2" thick pieces of Bondo. I've never seen so much Bondo on a car, never mind on an airplane. As I walked under the left wing root, a small frisbee size piece of body shop mud fell off and hit me in the head, I still have it. We towed the plane back to the hangar to have a closer look. The more we looked, the more strange things we found. Don't get me wrong, it was not a complete junk pile, after all, Mike did fly it all the way to London and back but it was clear, a new paint job was not going to fix all the problems. Both engines were using about as much oil as they were 100LL per hour so I decided to call Del and explain the situation. As I expected, I got the blame for buying the plane, even though he had purchased it three weeks before I joined the company. I found the video of the day Mike arrived in the plane just last week. Maybe I'll try to post some of it.

[Warbirdnerd]

The Evergreen P-38 is now listed with Platinum Fighters...
http://www.platinumfighters.com/#!p-38-n505mh/c693

With no price listed, does anyone know what this fine looking P-38 would sell for?

There is a price listed now...
$6,750,000.00

[P51Mstg]

Now that is a HECK of a story... Del Smith sounds like my former father-in-law....

Mark H

[Jack Cook]

Evergreen is like a room full of rocking chairs and you're the nervous long tailed cat!!

[sdennison]

I'd take this one in a friggin heart beat.



Pop and I in 1990 when it was at Champlin and was being run up, airworthy at the time.

[Pat Carry]

The Evergreen P-38 is now listed with Platinum Fighters...
http://www.platinumfighters.com/#!p-38-n505mh/c693

With no price listed, does anyone know what this fine looking P-38 would sell for?

There is a price listed now...
$6,750,000.00

Ok then, I had better check the balance in my cecking account!

[mustangdriver]

I hope the place survives ok. It's a cool place and some really nice volunteers. It would be sad for them to close their doors.

[Zachary]

I'd take this one in a friggin heart beat.

This belongs to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, not Evergreen.

[sdennison]

Crap, you're right. My bad. Just means I'm gonna have pay more...

[Zachary]

I'll chip in! We need a t-bolt in WI!!!

[JohnB]

Didn't she carry the TAT livery when owned by Harrah's? SN

I have an old Harrah's brochure that shows it from the front quarter...It was silver with black trim and the name "City of Reno" in a white box on the nose. I believe it had TAT titles, but the photos doesn't show them. Props are polished metal with red/white/blue tips.

Harrah also has a restored Jenny and in 1980, a P-38/F-5 in the outside restoration area missing its nose piece. It had no paint when I saw it.

[Warbirdnerd]

The TBM has been sold and is on the way to Texas...



Found it here:
https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/51161237002/

[astixjr]

The TBM has been sold and is on the way to Texas...



Found it here:
https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/51161237002/

Nice to see it going to a good home. Will they fly it? I'm not a member of that FB group. I remember the day that Hal Goddard and I flew over to New Mexico to look at that TBM for Del. I was still working as an a/c salesman for Avra Valley Airport's FBO. It was not quite done (flyable) when we saw it but Del decided to buy it anyway. It was a very solid TBM when I last saw it and I heard it only got better in the years after I left Evergreen. In the 2 1/2 years I was there we did not do much to it. It was a typical TBM. You rolled it out of the hangar, preflighted it, put a pilot in it, started it, and flew it. It was the Chevy truck of the collection at the time. Not all the planes in Del's collection at the time were so dependable. Somebody told me they did lots of detail work on it before they put it on display in McMinnville. Anyone have detailed photos of it now? Cockpit, turret?

[Warbirdnerd]

I believe it will fly again. There are some shots of it at Courtesy's website.
http://www.courtesyaircraft.com/Current ... 20AIRCRAFT)%20TBM-3%20AVENGER.htm