Re: 1939 Static test wrecks at Wright Field - ID? (update)

[Chris Brame]

Found this intriguing photo in the Life archive:



Can anyone ID the plane on the left, or the fuselage on the ground? Is that fuselage possibly a static test rig for pressurization? The nose with its forward-slanting windscreen looks somewhat like the early Capelis XC-12, but I don't remember any military evaluation of that plane (except in the movie Flying Tigers!)

Over to the experts...

6 years later, edited to add:




P-38 center section; static test airframe?




B-18 cockpit in a crate:

Last edited by Chris Brame on Wed Jan 20, 2016 11:34 pm, edited 4 times in total.

[airnutz]

Dunno bout the one on the left, I'll have to do some looking. The nose on what, as you said,
appears to be a test hull is too short to be the Capelis. It has been photodocumented that
the Capelis remains ended up in an LA scrapyard in the 40's or 50's. There have been further
report that the XC-12 made it as far as the holding yard of the San Diego Air Museum later
on and that's where the trail stops. Note, appears to be a big guage portruding from the right
side cockpit.

Reckon it could also be a scrapyard "Gary" putting together his own bits of junque for fanciful display?

[John Dupre]

Looks like it could have been a test vessel for pressurization experiments?

[51fixer]

The 2 wings stacked there look very early P-38.
The pile of stuff in the foreground could be as well. Coolant lines and some P-38ish upper cowl formers in the pile.
Rich
.

[Chris Brame]

Very old thread, but I found some more photos from the same batch and added them.

[Dan Jones]

Looks like some XP-38 wreckage there.

[bdk]

Test airframes usually have fittings and hoses connected to them. That P-38 looks like a crash.

[DH82EH]

It would make sense that the wreck of the XP-38 would get taken to Wright field.
It crashed in February of 1939.

Andy

[Digger]

Perhaps a bit of a side issue, but what year did Boeing commence design and or construction of the B-29?

[hang the expense]

Looks to be the entire center section minus the nose of a 38 on its back.