Aloha All,
The late Jay Frank Dial, author of the two F4U
Profile Publications and the P-39
Profile, was the source for aircraft markings for the Confederate Air Force when they abandoned the red-white-blue schemes. With Jay's 'bent' for the Corsair, he made the CAF B1RD into Pappy Boyington's plane.
CAF Col Don McGinley took the F4U to an Olathe, KS airshow...and made several passes and saw a red low fuel light on the dash. He later said that he thought the plane still had a "stand-pipe" in the fuel tank and made a another pass...and as he was coming in to land...the blades stopped. He went through some power lines and bellied into a farmer's field. The first to arrive was the farmer who ignored Don's bleeding head (gun sight) and put his thumbs behind the straps on his bib overalls and exclaimed. "I thought I'd never see ANOTHER one of those planes in my field!" Olathe, KS was a former USN base in WWII.
So the plane was trucked to Meacham Field, Ft Worth, where the Corsair with the "McGinley Modification" became a hangar queen! I sat in her many times during that era, along with a hangar queen Spanish 109 in Spanish Civil War markings (as seen in movie
Hindenburg).
The CEO of LTV spent some cash and with the LTV retirees built the plane as #13. After the CEO got in trouble for illegal stock trading (Martha Stewart style), I lost track of what happened to #13... Thanks for getting me up to speed!
Cheers,
David Aiken
