Wartime pilot of White 33 reunited with "his" P-38...

[Warbirdnerd]

Colorado Springs man gets happy reunion with World War II plane he piloted

Historians have described America's victory in the war that ended 70 years ago Saturday as a symphony of men and machine.

The bravery of a generation grasped America's industrial might to topple first Germany, then Japan.

A worker at Westpac Restorations in Colorado Springs summed it up more succinctly while putting the finishing touches on a World War II Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

"That's Superman," he said, pointing to 100 year-old Frank Royal who was observing restorations of the twin-engine fighter. "This is his cape."

It was more than a cape for Royal. In New Guinea in 1942, that plane, now called White 33, was a lifeline. The roar of its twin 12-cylinder motors gave him confidence that he could do his job and survive.

"It was like music," Royal said this week after reuniting with the plane he flew in World War II.

The circumstances that brought plane and pilot back together are improbable. The P-38 was scrapped and buried in Papua New Guinea after a World War II combat incident that came after Royal had gone home to a job at the newly-built Pentagon.

Generations later, the World War II trash was dug up as buried treasure and shipped to Colorado for repair at Westpac, where owner Bill Klaers and his team have become the nation's most renowned restorers of World War II planes.

Through luck or fate, Royal came to visit Westpac and the adjacent National Museum of World War II Aviation. He told Klaers he had flown P-38s in the Pacific. After talking, the two realized that Royal had flown the plane Westpac was restoring.

Getting airborne

Royal was born in Colorado during World War I. Raised on a ranch outside Rocky Ford, he had an idyllic rural childhood, but it didn't last.

"The '29 crash nearly wiped out my parents," he said. "Then came the Dust Bowl and the Depression."

At 16, Royal hit the road to chase his dream of becoming a doctor. He worked odd jobs around the country and picked up a private flying experience after working with a barnstormer. He returned to Colorado and started college at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"If I didn't sleep very much and if I didn't eat very much I could stay in college," Royal said.

To make ends meet, he joined an Army program for would-be flyers in 1940.

"That began 30 years in the U.S. Army Air Corps," Royal said.

It was an air service ill-prepared for the task it would face after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and propelled America into war in 1941. Royal and his colleagues battled advanced and nimble enemy planes with American relics. A lieutenant when the war came, Royal was sent to the Pacific in the much-maligned Bell P-39 Airacobra.

"It was not the right airplane," Royal said.

Royal gained a souvenir from service with the P-39 - a piece of propeller with a Japanese bullet hole in it.

"I came near to buying it in a P-39 on July 4, 1942," Royal remembered.

The P-39 was designed as a high-altitude fighter built for speed. Then the design was modified. Its supercharger was removed and armor added, making it heavy and sluggish. When Royal and his wingman were jumped by lighter, faster Japanese Zeros on Independence Day, they had little chance.

His comrade was gunned from the sky and Royal wound up in a furious dog fight near his friend's descending parachute. When his friend hit the ground, Royal dropped the nose and raced for home in the treetops. His planed was scrapped after he landed - there were too many bullet holes to patch.

"Fifty percent of the pilots who went over with me didn't come back," Royal said.

Emergence of the P-38

Back in the United States, a solution for harried pilots like Royal was coming off production lines. The P-38 Lightning had been an experimental plane when the war started. The sleek Lockheed design was faster than anything else in America's inventory.

And it was lethal, with four heavy machine guns and a cannon clustered in its nose.

"We swear that Lockheed engineers were space aliens," Klaers said as he looked over White 33, which has been in his Aviation Way shop in various stages of reconstruction for years.

Klaers and his team have battled to recreate the fighter from junk pulled from the New Guinea jungle. Along the way, they've studied every piece of the craft, with thousands of pages of engineering drawings of each nut, bolt, rivet, wire and washer. Many pieces for the plane have been hand-built at Westpac to exact Lockheed specifications.

Work on White-33 is about 90 percent complete now. The engines are installed and the wings have been re-skinned. The only item going into the plane that isn't original is a modern radio.

"Yes, this will fly," Klaers said.

At times, it has seemed like the P-38 would never be finished.

The fighter is the earliest of its type ever restored. During the war, design changes came rapidly and frequently for fighters, especially the P-38. The examples of the plane that have been restored are all later versions.

"This is a completely different animal," Klaers said.

One factor driving a fevered pace at Westpac is Royal. While the Wold War II flyer is healthy, he is 100. And everyone in the shop wants to make sure Frank Royal can see his old plane fly.

"If we can get Frank here, we will take the plane and put it up on its own gear," Klaers said Monday.

'Everything worked perfectly'

Royal met that P-38 when it was brand new. It had been shipped to Australia where Royal's unit, the 39th Fighter Squadron was recovering from months in combat.

Royal was one of the first to fly White 33, which was one of the first four P-38s to make it to the Pacific. He had to be the first - he was the squadron's commander. It was a new position for Royal, who was elevated to command by tragedy during a training flight for the unit's old boss.

"He was practicing skip-bombing and it blew up under him," Royal said. "I happened to be the next guy in line."

At 27 years old, Royal was considered to be an old man among his youthful colleagues. He was trusted to try out the new planes.

"These airplanes were special and treasured," Royal said.

In the air, Royal soon learned why.

Where his old P-39 had one 1,200-horsepower motor, the P-38 came with two 1,600-horsepower engines. It climbed like a rocket.

"The first time I took off, everything worked perfectly," Royal said.

The new plane could fly faster, higher and farther than the Airacobra. It was a deadly answer to the Japanese fighters that had dominated Pacific skies early in the war.

"You could get into scoring position and often did," Royal said. "In the first year we had them, we destroyed 100 enemy planes and only lost four pilots," he said.

Royal's time in the cockpit of White 33 was brief. But Royal showed how he could perform in his new, superior craft.

"I had one credited kill and two probables," he said.

He and other veteran pilots were called back to the U.S. to help run the rapidly expanding Air Force. Other younger men, including Royal's squadron-mate Richard Bong, who shot down at least 40 enemy planes, flew to fame in the P-38. Royal, who twice earned the Silver Star Medal, wound up working at a desk in the Pentagon planning Air Force campaigns.

"I got married to a beautiful young lady," he said smiling at memory of Renee, his wife of 65 years.

They had five children.

Reunited

At Westpac, Royal ambled across the shop floor with assistance from a cane and one of his sons.

Klaers greeted him.

"Here's your plane," he said.

Royal stared at White 33, patting a propeller with his hand. The old pilot claims he never fell in love with an aircraft.

"I never named my planes," he said.

White 33's name comes from its aircraft number, painted in white on its tail.

Klaers said the plane will be finished in a few weeks, ready to take to the skies again.

"It's probably the hardest project Westpac has ever done," he said.

He's confident the P-38, which was credited with nine kills during the war, will gain admiration in Colorado Springs where it will be a key feature of the National Museum of World War II Aviation next to his shop.

"It will be a draw by itself," Klaers said. "It is the most historic P-38 in the world."

Royal is happy others are embracing his history, but he wants White 33 to stand for more than his past with it. The plane, he said, is a symbol of a generation that sacrificed much to make America free.

"The guys who gave it all and the guys who went missing in action - they're the heroes," he said.

The plane brings back memories of those men for Royal. For now, he and White 33 are all that's left of that piece of the war that ended with Japan's surrender 70 years ago.

"One of things that I don't know if I enjoy is being the only survivor," Royal said.

But for a second, those seven decades vanished.

Royal looked at the sleek plane, its aluminum gleaming.

His right hand rose swiftly in a stiff salute.

Found it here:
http://gazette.com/colorado-springs-man ... le/1557425

[K5DH]

Absolutely wonderful!

[wyocubdriver]

This is what restoring these warbirds is all about!

[Chris Brame]

Great story!

The fighter is the earliest of its type ever restored.

Nope - 42-12652 is the third earliest. 41-7630 Glacier Girl and 42-12647 Dottie from Brooklyn are earlier.

[Adam Kline]

What luck.

[Zac Yates]

What an excellent article. Kudos to the writer for a great job, and thanks Warbirdnerd for sharing it.

Of course, this makes another restoration I have to follow!

[Spectre_I]

A relative who lives in Denver sent me the newspaper with the article in it. Great story.