P-40B over Lake Matthews - April 1998 So, over the weekend while going through stuff, I found an unlabeled box and when I opened it, it had a lot of photos I took at Planes of Fame circa 1997-2003. They were all prints, so I have scanned the best ones, and here they re.
Am also a bit envious of your memory TC. I'm a decade younger but if I were to open a box of photos from two decades ago I know that I would not be able to recall the level of detail about each item that you do, right down to indivduals involved.
Damned if I know how Roosevelt knew to sign that order 100 years before the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor though. ;-)
Cool photos! I remember the two times I visited Chino to see the planes and other exhibits, particularly the built up model aircraft. The best experience was getting inside the B-17 and marveling at how small and cramped it was inside for the ten man crew…and I was unencumbered by flight suits, flak vests, jackets, mitts, boots, etc. Please, more photos!
Jurate and I went to see "9-0-9" when the Collings Foundation came through, back in 1996. There were a lot of vets wiating and the planes were late. Jurate talked to several of them and heard their stories, and when the arrived and she took the tour, two vets gave her a detailed tour. When we were driving home, she said "I'll never look at one of those airplanes the way I did before." They were incredibly small. Get in a B-25 - the cockpit is smaller than the front cabin of an old VW bug! It's tight when I'm in it in T-shirt and jeans, how they work electric flying suits and flak gear and could move is beyond me.
My buddy went through the B-17 with me and he was also struck by how cramped everything was. He told me that he thought the seats in coach class in a DC-10 were small until he saw the cockpit of the B-17 and the seats in there.
For any who are interested, HBO Max has just put "From The Earth To The Moon" back on the service. This 12-part miniseries that was first shown in 1998, is the first Big Thing that Tom Hanks produced. It's a love letter to the Moon Program, and tells the story in very human terms. It's not just astronauts in space. The episode that sets up the first moon landing tells the story of the Grumman designer who created the Lunar Lander, a masterpiece of engineering most of us never thought that much about. Alan Shepard's moon landing is told through the story of the two computer guys who had to hack the 12KB memory of the lander's onboard computer using punch cards with the "twin" on earth to give Shepard - who is hanging in space around the moon while they're doing this - a way to convince his computer that there isn't an emergency and the landing doesn't have to be aborted. The account of the final moon mission, where they did the best science, is told in the story of the geology professor who taught the astronauts enough geology that one of them was able to spot and pick up the oldest rock ever brought back from the moon. I'm definitely going to be streaming this for the next 12 days for my evening's entertainment. It's excellent! Watch. In. Confidence.
There is a book called Horses of Destiny, Two pages and an action sketch of each horse,beginning with a five toed throw back to Eohippus, ridden by Ceasar, through the ages to Man o' War. Your book could be Airplanes nof Destiny. It would sell like hotcakes.
Great photos, TC! My husband John is impressed! He loves warbirds. He was one of a team that built a working, flying replica of a Boeing P-26, in a shop in central Massachusetts, led by a A&P mechanic named Nate Mayo who was a Navy veteran who flew mostly S2F's off aircraft carriers in the late 1950's. John went over to the Collings Museum, which is in our town, and asked Bob where he could get involved in working on planes, because he's already a pilot. Bob pointed him at Nate. Because Boeing has rights to their plans in perpetuity and never releases them, Nate and John and the rest of the volunteer team had to reverse-engineer the entire airframe from the example in the Smithsonian that Nate heavily photographed and measured. Nate also had a partial copy of a maintenance manual that showed a lot of the internal structure. One of the team bought software to loft the curves, and then they made their own engineering drawings, which guided the production of the actual parts in Nate's workshop/machine shop. (John is dictating all of this to me.) John's website documents the entire 9-year process (every Saturday). The coolest page is this one: http://www.jrd.org/nate/06-07-08/ It has both many still photos of the finished plane, and air-to-air video of it being flown by warbird test pilot Dave Morss.
Very cool! My congratulations to John! Interestingly, when Planes of Fame decided their real one they have flown for 60 years was likely in need of major overhaul, when they stripped it down and then opened up, they found the entire airframe is anodized! No corrosion anywhere. It's really a sight when they fly it. I remember once in 1998, this former USAF pilot came out to speak about Pearl Harbor - he'd been one of the few pilots who got airborne on Dec 7 - and he walked in the hangar, stopped when he got to the P-26, then turned and looked out the hangar door and said "oh my god." He told me he was standing next to the first fighter he had flown (the P-26) and looking out on the ramp at the last fighter he had flown: the F-104. He was there at the exact right time to participate in the greatest period of aviation.
Great story! Btw, John says, in regard to the entire Boeing P-26 airframe being anodized: In Nate's workshop they didn't use the same process Boeing probably did, but "we used the alodyne process, which ends up with a sort of yellowish coating on each part, which is a very thin layer of zinc chromate etched into the surface. We had a big vat of the stuff for most of the parts. For the long skinny parts, we made a long skinny tank out of a piece of PVC pipe." John is a senior software engineering manager by trade. In his free time, he finds it very relaxing to work with machinery he can see and touch.
The P-26 they built is now at Fighter Factory in Virginia Beach. Nate passed away five years ago. Fighter Factory's website shows a picture of Dave Morss flying the Mayocraft P-26, taken by fellow builder-teammate Sandy, from John's Piper Comanche.
Amazing set of photos! I am going to save the Grumman 'Cat Flight' picture in my set of historical family pictures as my dad's logbook shows he flew the Wildcat, Hellcat, and Bearcat in the 1940's.
They’re what’s left of wrecked Lend Lease aircraft from the British. Like other Lend Lease equipment, they were dumped rather than being returned at the end of hostilities to avoid paying for them. We did the same thing with surplus aircraft, vehicles, tanks and other stuff at the end of WW2. There might be enough pieces to assemble maybe one or two Hurricanes for exhibits, maybe.
As I have mentioned before, I find your newsletters about your passion(s) (kitties included) so engaging. I thought of you this morning as I listened to Beau’s first video and thought you would probably be interested and maybe even have a take of your own. I confess, I may have a curiosity about such things but not the driving passion I have for other things. https://youtu.be/wvq9x1gOtBY
Fascinating. The P38 was this 10-year old boy's favorite only to be replaced by the 1955 Covette as that "some day I am going to ...." Thanks for finding and sharing.
I found myself interested in this in spite of myself. These planes are quite genteel in design. I'd be interested in any comments on their Aerodynamics. .
Most of them are actually pretty far from "genteel," Susan. Until the engineers learned enough about transonic flight to come up with "dive brakes" that broke up the nearly-supersonic airflow over the wings of the P-38 and P-47 and kept them out of the transonic range, the airplanes were killers to just about any pilot who initiated an all-out dive from high altitude. Many P-38 pilots were actually afraid of their airplanes and thus didn't fly them to the max against their opponents in air combat. Here's an account of one P-47 pilot in the 78th Fighter Group who lived to tell the tale:
Pilots were struck on reading the manual by the dire warnings not to dive vertically above 25,000 feet. On February 6, 1943, Captain Herb Ross took one up for a check ride. Climbing to 35,000 feet, he decided to see what the warning was about and pushed over into a steep dive. Speed built rapidly: at 27,000 feet, he experienced tail buffet so intense the stick flailed out of his hands; he was only able to grab the stick as he sped through 20,000 feet, with the controls “set in concrete." Seeing he was at the top of the “yellow arc” of the airspeed indicator and believing his time had come, he stopped trying to work the controls and began to feed in nose-up elevator trim. As he passed through 10,000 feet, suddenly the racket stopped and the nose gradually came up. Leveling off at 5,000 feet and catching his breath, Ross called to ask whether he should land the damaged airplane or bail out. He was told to bring it in to have a look. On arrival, he was still so shaken he had to be helped from the cockpit. A short inspection certified the P-47 “Class 26" - damaged beyond repair: the paint was off the leading edges of all flying surfaces; wing spars had been pulled back and the sheet metal failed at the wing roots; vertical and horizontal stabilizers were pulled back with root failure, and most of the fabric on the elevators was in tatters. Harry Dayhuff recalled, “It was the sickest looking lately-new P-47 one can imagine, having only collided with air.” Ross subsequently gained the nickname “Rocket.”
Despite having a son who is fascinated by all things plane, I know little to nothing about them but a good story is a good story and between "voice", inference from context, a grasp of the broad strokes, and a relish of the color provided by (often mysterious to me) details... that's a good story.
I have been reading Clean Sweep and it's much the same experience. I know there's certain background information that would add layers which I only get whiffs of as I go, but it's an enjoyable read for the plane ignorant as well!
I love these photos, and will look forward to more. The clarity of the background despite the distance is fascinating. The way in which the focus on ground details is only a few steps less crisp than the focus on the planes themselves is somewhat flattening in an almost hallucinatory way that ironically introduces a bit of appropriate vertigo. I know, I know - it's supposed to be all about the planes but the photography is amazing.
Love this kind of porn Tom. Great photos! (A little typo at
beginning 1841 FDR?)😉
thanks - corrected it
Nice camera work!
Glorious. I absolutely love those images.
Am also a bit envious of your memory TC. I'm a decade younger but if I were to open a box of photos from two decades ago I know that I would not be able to recall the level of detail about each item that you do, right down to indivduals involved.
Damned if I know how Roosevelt knew to sign that order 100 years before the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor though. ;-)
It's my Asperger's. If it's something I am interested in, I have near-total recall. If not, in one ear and out the other.
Agreed. Tom’s memory is exceptional.
Cool photos! I remember the two times I visited Chino to see the planes and other exhibits, particularly the built up model aircraft. The best experience was getting inside the B-17 and marveling at how small and cramped it was inside for the ten man crew…and I was unencumbered by flight suits, flak vests, jackets, mitts, boots, etc. Please, more photos!
Jurate and I went to see "9-0-9" when the Collings Foundation came through, back in 1996. There were a lot of vets wiating and the planes were late. Jurate talked to several of them and heard their stories, and when the arrived and she took the tour, two vets gave her a detailed tour. When we were driving home, she said "I'll never look at one of those airplanes the way I did before." They were incredibly small. Get in a B-25 - the cockpit is smaller than the front cabin of an old VW bug! It's tight when I'm in it in T-shirt and jeans, how they work electric flying suits and flak gear and could move is beyond me.
My buddy went through the B-17 with me and he was also struck by how cramped everything was. He told me that he thought the seats in coach class in a DC-10 were small until he saw the cockpit of the B-17 and the seats in there.
TC, I wish my dad were still alive to read your books; he loved planes like this. Great pictures and looking forward to more tomorrow.
You should put a list together of the greatest Hollywood movies ever made about the great air wars from the beginning through today.
For any who are interested, HBO Max has just put "From The Earth To The Moon" back on the service. This 12-part miniseries that was first shown in 1998, is the first Big Thing that Tom Hanks produced. It's a love letter to the Moon Program, and tells the story in very human terms. It's not just astronauts in space. The episode that sets up the first moon landing tells the story of the Grumman designer who created the Lunar Lander, a masterpiece of engineering most of us never thought that much about. Alan Shepard's moon landing is told through the story of the two computer guys who had to hack the 12KB memory of the lander's onboard computer using punch cards with the "twin" on earth to give Shepard - who is hanging in space around the moon while they're doing this - a way to convince his computer that there isn't an emergency and the landing doesn't have to be aborted. The account of the final moon mission, where they did the best science, is told in the story of the geology professor who taught the astronauts enough geology that one of them was able to spot and pick up the oldest rock ever brought back from the moon. I'm definitely going to be streaming this for the next 12 days for my evening's entertainment. It's excellent! Watch. In. Confidence.
Hey thanks - I can do that!
There is a book called Horses of Destiny, Two pages and an action sketch of each horse,beginning with a five toed throw back to Eohippus, ridden by Ceasar, through the ages to Man o' War. Your book could be Airplanes nof Destiny. It would sell like hotcakes.
Nicely done TC. Anyone who hasn't bought Clean Sweep yet will have a much better visualization of the airplanes you talk about.
Great photos, TC! My husband John is impressed! He loves warbirds. He was one of a team that built a working, flying replica of a Boeing P-26, in a shop in central Massachusetts, led by a A&P mechanic named Nate Mayo who was a Navy veteran who flew mostly S2F's off aircraft carriers in the late 1950's. John went over to the Collings Museum, which is in our town, and asked Bob where he could get involved in working on planes, because he's already a pilot. Bob pointed him at Nate. Because Boeing has rights to their plans in perpetuity and never releases them, Nate and John and the rest of the volunteer team had to reverse-engineer the entire airframe from the example in the Smithsonian that Nate heavily photographed and measured. Nate also had a partial copy of a maintenance manual that showed a lot of the internal structure. One of the team bought software to loft the curves, and then they made their own engineering drawings, which guided the production of the actual parts in Nate's workshop/machine shop. (John is dictating all of this to me.) John's website documents the entire 9-year process (every Saturday). The coolest page is this one: http://www.jrd.org/nate/06-07-08/ It has both many still photos of the finished plane, and air-to-air video of it being flown by warbird test pilot Dave Morss.
Very cool! My congratulations to John! Interestingly, when Planes of Fame decided their real one they have flown for 60 years was likely in need of major overhaul, when they stripped it down and then opened up, they found the entire airframe is anodized! No corrosion anywhere. It's really a sight when they fly it. I remember once in 1998, this former USAF pilot came out to speak about Pearl Harbor - he'd been one of the few pilots who got airborne on Dec 7 - and he walked in the hangar, stopped when he got to the P-26, then turned and looked out the hangar door and said "oh my god." He told me he was standing next to the first fighter he had flown (the P-26) and looking out on the ramp at the last fighter he had flown: the F-104. He was there at the exact right time to participate in the greatest period of aviation.
Great story! Btw, John says, in regard to the entire Boeing P-26 airframe being anodized: In Nate's workshop they didn't use the same process Boeing probably did, but "we used the alodyne process, which ends up with a sort of yellowish coating on each part, which is a very thin layer of zinc chromate etched into the surface. We had a big vat of the stuff for most of the parts. For the long skinny parts, we made a long skinny tank out of a piece of PVC pipe." John is a senior software engineering manager by trade. In his free time, he finds it very relaxing to work with machinery he can see and touch.
Sounds like you married an interesting guy. He scores 100 for being an "airplane guy."
The P-26 they built is now at Fighter Factory in Virginia Beach. Nate passed away five years ago. Fighter Factory's website shows a picture of Dave Morss flying the Mayocraft P-26, taken by fellow builder-teammate Sandy, from John's Piper Comanche.
Go to https://www.fighterfactory.com/fighters.html and click on P-26.
That's really super. I'm actually going to build a 1/48 P-26 in those markings.
Carry on, Tom, you're on a roll. I took a nose dive with Ross. You "deliver" your story as if you lived it yourself.
jeez, Tom. you're pretty fucking GOOD at this!
Learned from the best. :-)
Amazing set of photos! I am going to save the Grumman 'Cat Flight' picture in my set of historical family pictures as my dad's logbook shows he flew the Wildcat, Hellcat, and Bearcat in the 1940's.
Did you see the recent (three days old maybe?) Guardian article about finding an old WWII airplane in Ukraine? Made me think of you...
I think it was the remains of eight Hawker Hurricanes that were buried near Kyiv.
bits and pieces, from the photos.
They’re what’s left of wrecked Lend Lease aircraft from the British. Like other Lend Lease equipment, they were dumped rather than being returned at the end of hostilities to avoid paying for them. We did the same thing with surplus aircraft, vehicles, tanks and other stuff at the end of WW2. There might be enough pieces to assemble maybe one or two Hurricanes for exhibits, maybe.
As I have mentioned before, I find your newsletters about your passion(s) (kitties included) so engaging. I thought of you this morning as I listened to Beau’s first video and thought you would probably be interested and maybe even have a take of your own. I confess, I may have a curiosity about such things but not the driving passion I have for other things. https://youtu.be/wvq9x1gOtBY
Wonderfully interesting, beautiful photos.
(Admit I opened with a little trepidation, never quite knowing what is coming next from you!! ) This one educated me. Thanks, TC
Fascinating. The P38 was this 10-year old boy's favorite only to be replaced by the 1955 Covette as that "some day I am going to ...." Thanks for finding and sharing.
I found myself interested in this in spite of myself. These planes are quite genteel in design. I'd be interested in any comments on their Aerodynamics. .
Most of them are actually pretty far from "genteel," Susan. Until the engineers learned enough about transonic flight to come up with "dive brakes" that broke up the nearly-supersonic airflow over the wings of the P-38 and P-47 and kept them out of the transonic range, the airplanes were killers to just about any pilot who initiated an all-out dive from high altitude. Many P-38 pilots were actually afraid of their airplanes and thus didn't fly them to the max against their opponents in air combat. Here's an account of one P-47 pilot in the 78th Fighter Group who lived to tell the tale:
Pilots were struck on reading the manual by the dire warnings not to dive vertically above 25,000 feet. On February 6, 1943, Captain Herb Ross took one up for a check ride. Climbing to 35,000 feet, he decided to see what the warning was about and pushed over into a steep dive. Speed built rapidly: at 27,000 feet, he experienced tail buffet so intense the stick flailed out of his hands; he was only able to grab the stick as he sped through 20,000 feet, with the controls “set in concrete." Seeing he was at the top of the “yellow arc” of the airspeed indicator and believing his time had come, he stopped trying to work the controls and began to feed in nose-up elevator trim. As he passed through 10,000 feet, suddenly the racket stopped and the nose gradually came up. Leveling off at 5,000 feet and catching his breath, Ross called to ask whether he should land the damaged airplane or bail out. He was told to bring it in to have a look. On arrival, he was still so shaken he had to be helped from the cockpit. A short inspection certified the P-47 “Class 26" - damaged beyond repair: the paint was off the leading edges of all flying surfaces; wing spars had been pulled back and the sheet metal failed at the wing roots; vertical and horizontal stabilizers were pulled back with root failure, and most of the fabric on the elevators was in tatters. Harry Dayhuff recalled, “It was the sickest looking lately-new P-47 one can imagine, having only collided with air.” Ross subsequently gained the nickname “Rocket.”
Despite having a son who is fascinated by all things plane, I know little to nothing about them but a good story is a good story and between "voice", inference from context, a grasp of the broad strokes, and a relish of the color provided by (often mysterious to me) details... that's a good story.
I have been reading Clean Sweep and it's much the same experience. I know there's certain background information that would add layers which I only get whiffs of as I go, but it's an enjoyable read for the plane ignorant as well!
I love these photos, and will look forward to more. The clarity of the background despite the distance is fascinating. The way in which the focus on ground details is only a few steps less crisp than the focus on the planes themselves is somewhat flattening in an almost hallucinatory way that ironically introduces a bit of appropriate vertigo. I know, I know - it's supposed to be all about the planes but the photography is amazing.
Great stuff, TC!