The "Tony"

[jspott]

Does anyone know if any of the fighter factory projects are still actively being worked on
? Tony, p-38, vengeance, a-20,p-39 or kingfisher.

[GregP]

While I was working with Joe Yancey we had several very interesting people come and visit the shop. Many were quite knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects.

On one such occasion, the gentleman who visited said that one of the USAAF test pilots who flew the Tony was airborne when he experienced an engine failure. He made a dead dstick landing with no damage at an airport, Most test pilots would have called it a day and left the Japanese fighter there. This was several years ago and I am wracking my brain for the name of the test pilot, but will not make a "guess."

Appaerently this guy pulled the engine and disassembled it. He was familiar with the DB series, having actually participated in rebuilding one. He discovered that the nosecase had overheated and started looking around. What he found was that the Japanese had failed to drill an oil hole through to the nosecase, so the engine only had whatever oil in the nosecase was there after assembly. The hole was in either the case or the nosecase, but not the other one.

He speculated that drilling the oil galley would render the Japanese copy of the DB a good engine, similar to the German DB. I do NOT know the accuracy of this story, but would definitely check it out if I were building a Tony with an original Japanese inline engine in it!

[OZFURYFAN]

An email to Rob Greinert in Australia may help, I'm pretty sure he has the Tony's and the Vengeance but do not know any more than that, the Boston is still at Wangaratta where Murray G commenced repairs AFAIK, cheers,Pete

[Zac Yates]

I have some news! Kermit Weeks has recently been in New Zealand and Australia, and has posted a picture of him with two of the Precision team on Facebook with the following (clipped by me) caption:

"Anyway, here's Roland in the middle that did most of the structural work on Jerry Yegan's[sic] Tony and will finish up the rest before the aircraft is sent to New Zealand to be fitting out for flying. I hope to get a little bit of work done on mine while it's still in Australia."

He also goes on to speak of the Yagen Vought OS2U and P-39 projects, but those are subjects for another thread.

Good news for Tony fans!