Howdy, y'all!
Yep, I'm back...need I tell you that I've been busy and life has become hectic yet again?
So, what does one do when one needs to make a post to let everyone know one is still alive? Well, let's start with another one of those *$m@ airplane stories...this time, I'm going to tell you about my brief acquaintance with Douglas AD-4NA, U. S. Navy Bureau Number (BuNo)126882, N91945, replete (at the time) in VA-176 "Papoose Flight" colors...
If you were an airplane geek and lived anywhere in the coastal region of Central Florida in the 1980's, you knew of two important facts: The Valiant Air Command had formed in Titusville and had airshows every Spring, and a man named Harry Doan was a Colonel in the organization. I first learned of both when, driving around Daytona Beach, I spied a large, fenced lot off Big Tree Lane--and contained within that large, fenced lot were carcasses of H-34's. Lots of H-34's. The sign on the fence said "Valiant Air Command--Big Tree Division". The man who owned the lot was, of course, Harry Doan, and Harry had a helicopter service--hence the many H-34's, I believe he used them for spare parts. I never got to meet Harry, so I have to go on what I was told at the time. His main facility was at the New Smyrna Beach airport, and along with said helicopter service, he also re-built and flew warbirds. The first of Harry's airplanes I ever saw was a Hawker Sea Fury--but he didn't call it that. His was a "SkyFury". See, Harry knew that the original Bristol Centaurus sleeve-valve radial engine was A: temperamental and 2: hard to source parts for. So, being the wily old airplane guy he was, he removed the Centaurus and installed a Wright R-3350 he had removed from a Douglas AD Skyraider. They were about the same size and weight, so I guess the swap was fairly straightforward. I saw the airplane fly at several airshows, and it was quite a sight. Later on (2006), I got to see an honest-to-goodness Sea Fury fly, too, and the sensory experience was day to night different--the 3350 sounds like many U. S. built radials, it has a distinct sound. Well, so does the Centaurus...
Anyway, back to the story at hand...after I had graduates from The Harvard of the Sky, I went to work in Ft. Lauderdale. My roommate had graduated the semester after I had, and he went to work for the space program and had also started to do some work for the VAC. He reminded me of the airshow, and I would go every year to watch the hardware take flight, and to see what he was working on at that particular time (the first airplane he worked was a total rebuild of an F4U Corsair that would be assembled from at least two wrecks--a -4 and a -7--and many more fabricated parts and to the best of my knowledge was never finished; the last one I knew he was working on was an Avro Anson that I believe still sits in the VAC hangar/museum, also waiting to be restored to this day). It was an annual ritual, of sorts--I'd drive up on Friday, we'd go to the show on Saturday, and I'd be home by Sunday afternoon.
The 1992 VAC Warbird Airshow started nicely enough, and it looked like we'd get to see some unusual hardware take flight--someone had brought a fairly freshly restored Canadair Sabre (a Canadian built F-86F), a group known as "The Georgia Boys" had not only a T-37, but also a C-119, a group of folks had rescued a C-123 from Customs impound in Ft. Lauderdale and had it ready to fly, and Harry had his Skyraider there. Our friend Bill Noriega was on the Air Boss scaffold, as he was every year. We walked the flight line, looked at the airplanes on display, then moved over to the viewing area. We stuck close to Bill, since he could tell us what was up next.
A group of T-6's and T-28's did their thing overhead. At the same time, a group of airplanes--including the Skyraider, but I can't recall to this day what else was with it--waited their turn and the Sabre was in the process of spooling up, too. As the Texans and Trojans landed, the next group took flight. They marked time as the previous airplanes landed and as the Sabre took off. Once the runway was clear, the Skyraider led their flight over show center. They zoomed and looped overhead until their time came to return to the Earth. As the Sabre took center stage, we noted a huge could of dust at the departure end of the runway. We looked up the tower to Bill, and he told us to hang close--something had happened to the AD, and he wasn't sure what. As the Sabre wheeled in the blue sky, something darker was beginning to unfold...
At the time, few were aware of what happened, but they knew something was going on when the next group of airplanes to fly sat in the display area, idling. After a few minutes, they were told to shut down. At that moment the airshow effectively ended. The Sabre landed on the intersecting runway, taxied to a taxiway across the airport, and shut down.
Bill tossed a hand-held radio to us and told up to stay on frequency--he had requested the Fire Rescue squad to go take care of the situation. We were told that the Skyraider landed hot and long, and had flipped on it's back when it overran the runway threshold and hit a sand berm. We did as we were told--we listened and waited. Word slowly got back to us that yes, the airplane was upside-down. Then we got word that they were trying to get Harry out. Finally, we got the word that Harry had died. (The accident was noted by the Daytona Beach News-Journal on the following Tuesday--scroll to page 21 of this link...)
The next morning, Bill and a few of us went to the end of the runway to get the airplane upright and to the VAC hangar. That was a trip I never really want to take again...
Aviation is a small world. Several years later, I got to actually work on the same airplane when Denny Sherman of Sherman Aircraft Sales brought it to us for an intercom installation. I looked it over, and couldn't believe it was the same airplane. I later gave Denny a model in the same markings that I had built from a Monogram kit earlier that year, a model I built to honor Harry, a man I never knew but wished I had. Men like that have colorful histories, and more of them are leaving us every day.
Bill Noriega is also gone, from lung cancer. He passed about ten years ago, and I recall with great amusement those times when a group of us would descend uopn the Who-Song and Larry's Ft. Lauderdale location, where the server was told "Give us a couple orders of shrimp stuffed hollowpenises (Bill's phrase for jalapeños) and a couple buckets of beers. We'll let you know when we're ready for seconds..."
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Speaking of colorful men who are no longer with us, my uncle, a WWII Marine who saw action on Okinawa, left us last week. I build a few models for him about ten years ago:
A Tamiya 1/48 scale F4U-1D. Uncle Ted would tell me stories about his ride in a Corsair--he sat in the seat pan and the pilot sat on his lap...
An Accurate Miniatures 1/48 scale SBD-5 Dauntless. Uncle Ted rode in the back set of these many times, but not as aircrew. He'd go on short hops just to ride...
And, finally, an Accurate Miniatures 1/48 scale TBM-3 Avenger, just because. The Avenger and Corsair bases are scratchbuilt carrier decks made from basswood and plastic strips. The Dauntless base is HO scale ballast painted to depict a crushed coral parking area. Pardon the quality, these photos were taken ten years or so ago with equipment of the era...
Uncle Ted, we miss you already, but we know you're home again. Semper Fi!
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As a follow up on an earlier airplane story, here are some more leads on Catalina Zero-Four Juliet...
First, a story by one of the passengers aboard on that last, ill-fated trip. And, finally, a brief history of the CIA PBY's.
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As far as plastic goes, I haven't done a whole lot--except acquire kits. Today's purchase was the 1/35 scale Hobby Boss rendition of the IDF's Merkava IIID. From what I've read, it compares favorably to the Meng kit of the same subject, and it would appear that Hobby Boss corrected the suspension goof of their Merkava IV. I also was influenced to buy Italeri's 1/35 Carro Armato M13/40 Italian medium tank--our fearless leader at the AMPS Chapter is busily kitbashing a proper M13/40 with the Italeri kit (which is actually a pretty accurate M14/41) and Tamiya's M13/40 (which, he tells me, isn't the most dimensionally accurate thing out there). I'm slowly plugging away on the StuG IV as well, so as I get spare time, I should be able to complete another kit or three. It seems that I'll go for weeks without touching plastic to weeks where I'm popping them out in quick succession. Maybe that stems from my pledge to clear the backlog before I start anything new...
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and as always, I bid you Peace.
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