Zero image...what, where, when?????

[Michel Lemieux]

Zero image...what, where, when?????

Found this image by fluke! What throws me off are the German wings in the back. They look like a mock up of some sort....

Looks like a basement of some sort.....

[mike furline]

I don't know where or when the photo was taken, but just a guess......

The four wing guns match the A6M7-63 located at SDASM


and the Bf-109 (wooden mockup in the background) wing paint appears to match the Bf-109 at SDASM as well.
https://www.skytamer.com/Messerschmitt_Bf.109G.html

[Michel Lemieux]

Well spotted!!!!

Congrads.

[Jim MacDonald]

Definitely SDASM. The first photo must have been taken a couple of years after I stopped volunteering there. Bucked a bunch of rivets in the wings, my scrawny arms could reach places the older guys couldn't squeeze into.



Mac

Last edited by Jim MacDonald on Sat Feb 09, 2019 3:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

[marine air]

That Zero reminds me of how for many years there was a real Zero on outside display in downtown Atlanta somewhere. Over time people picked tons of parts off it and vandalized it. It survived into the 1980's. Anyone know what became of it?

[Jim MacDonald]

The Atlanta A6M-5 was finally sold to the Whittington(?) brothers at World Jet & is now owned by the Flying Heritage Collection.





Mac

[mike furline]

A6M2 “HK 61-121” http://aircraft-in-focus.com/mitsubishi-a6m/

This A6M2 Model 21 was one of twelve Zeros captured on Saipan and shipped to the United States aboard the USS Copahee in 1944. After flight testing in the U.S. it was sold as scrap metal and ended up behind an antique shop in Atlanta, Georgia, where it became something of a cause celebre in the warbird preservation movement as various parties tried to acquire it for preservation. Finally the Flying Heritage Collection did so and displays it as recovered from Atlanta. Traces of both Japanese and American paint can be found on the fuselage and the cockpit, though partly stripped, yields much useful information.

[Jim MacDonald]

Definitely not an A6M2 with those stacks.



Plus more info here.

https://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/a6m5/1303.html

Mac

[Kyleb]

...After flight testing in the U.S. it was sold as scrap metal and ended up behind an antique shop in Atlanta, Georgia, where it became something of a cause celebre in the warbird preservation movement as various parties tried to acquire it for preservation. Finally the Flying Heritage Collection did so and displays it as recovered from Atlanta...

I used to visit that in the 80's, then it just disappeared in the early '90's. It was an odd thing to find right behind a museum (IIRC) right off of Peachtree Street near Georgia Tech. I always wondered if it would show up on the flying circuit one day.

Back in the day, it appeared that it had been subject to one of those "Pay a buck, hit the Zero with an axe" type fundraisers.

[bdk]

61-121 in that photo is the POF example.

[mike furline]

61-121 in that photo is the POF example.

Various online sources indicate that the POF example is 61-120, including the POF webpage. https://planesoffame.org/aircrafts/plane-A6M5

http://aircraft-in-focus.com/mitsubishi-a6m/