T-28 Armament kit - bought!

Thats funny.

Boy I can just imagine the lawsuits.

 

There were no constraints or restraints on the military down there during the war. The entire state and Gulf was assumed to be a military training ground and they operated 24/7. One big airshow every day. My buddy and I would ride our bikes out to the airbase on weekends and watch the carnage. They started with P-39's in '40, switched to P-40's, then to P-51's. North of us there were B-26's( Martins), B-17's, B-29's, and south there were B-24's, P-47's, B-25's and in between there was the Navy with all sorts of navy airplanes with designations that nobody ever figured out. Lots of action for 5 years.
SWITCHES

 

very cool, lets see more pics.

 

Fun indeed. Just what you need, something to make it a little more eyecatching on the ramp

 

I still get bombed at home most every night.

 

Speaking of bombed. I think that I mentioned this before but one afternoon at probably 1700 we were having dinner when a tremendous noise descended from the heavens and the bowls of the earth. My poor mom sat in her chair frozen in fear. I ran out to see what was going over and I was able to catch sight of 5 B-17's heading out into the Gulf at way less than 500 feet. My poor mother asked what in the world had happened and told her , " B-17's". Her answer, " Well, if they were that low they certainly must be lost." We discovered that they had cracked the glass in most of the windows that were set in steel sashes. That happened in 1941, I think, and it continued until 1945 in different ways but it forecast what was to come. We had a P-40 go in to the bush about 400 yards from the house, a P-39 disappear into the Gulf in front of our beach, and numerous mid-airs and crashes all around town. Pilots were drinking and partying most of the night and trying to fly fighters the next day when they had more hours in the bar than in the airplanes. In one month one squadron was down to two flyable airplanes from a start of 12 and several replacements. Really exciting times.
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Can you imagine the outrage & lawsuits if this were to happen today in Anytown USA?

There wouldn't be an Army Aircorp.

 

For a minute I thought the last picture was a Spad.

I didn't know 28's saw that kind of use.

 

Spent a few months at Ton Son Nuit Airfield in Saigon way back in spring 62, doing whatever it was the US Army told me to do, and on several occasions saw lots of bomed up T-28s and A-26s in and out of there. The 28s were most often not painted with the US star and bar outlined in yellow and the 26s were black. All US pilots. By the way Russ....your 28 looks excellent. Great job.

 

Little off subject but not really. An excellent read is The Rescue of Streetcat 304. About the rescue of a downed Navy type on the run in Laos for fourty hours. One of the guys that assisted in the rescue was Sandy 4 out of NKP is Bill Palank, a T-6 bud of mine from Sacramento. He tought me the Air Force way of flying formation back in 75. Great guy...quiet and unassuming.

 

The FAC guys were called " Mosquitos" during the Korean War. My late brother -in -law flew AT-6's then as an FAC and the photos of him and his airplane after a bad mission are amazing. The T-28 wasn't around then and the AT-6 had the duty and it took a tremendous amount of punishment...another great North American.
he flew Martin B-26's and B-25's in the Pacific Theater during WW2( it used to be that we could say, " During the War") but there have been too many of them now to be able to differentiate. Anyway, he said that he would prefer to fly the B-25 in normal operations but the B-26 in action because it always came back.
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If you're looking for another interesting story, check out "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" when you get a chance. It's about Dieter Dengler, a Spad pilot in Vietnam who was shot down, captured, and escaped. The story was eventually turned into "Rescue Dawn", but before that was produced Dieter himself starred in a documentary about his experiences.

 

late to the thread, but what a great read.

Russ, you are my hero, my hats off to you sir!

 

We tend to flock together...

Spicy said no to a plane, however this is still open for discussion (and it will fit in the garage)...
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The Skyraider has to go on the list of one of the greatest airplanes. Boeing competed in the RFP with the XF8B-1 against the Douglas Skyraider and lost big time. Boeing had the R4360 for power that was too much for one pilot to keep track of plus navigating and other mission management duties. The Boeing had an internal weapons bay and a few fracture problems in the spar chords. It wasn't chosen for obvious reasons. When I came to Seattle in 1950 there were three XF8B-!'s sitting on the ramp at Sandpoint Naval Air Station, huge airplanes with a 54 foot wing span. They were scrapped soon after. Sad. The Skyraider was a helluva airplane coupled with a great engine. Can't do better than that.
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You're correct, Russ. That airplane could carry more of a combat load than the B-17, which was 4000 pounds internal. It could carry more with and external load but they never did it in service that I know of.

 

The AD-1 could carry an external load of something like 8000 lbs , twice the normal B-17 load. I have never been an admirer of the Wright R3350 from B-29 days but I guess the final versions were okay. many of the B-29 engines had a terminal failure life of 6 hours. They had fields of them that had to be pulled off the '29's shortly after they arrived in the Mariana's from the states. They were only getting about 1900 HP for 3350 Cu.in.out of them at that time when the R-2800 was getting 2200 out of 2800 cu.in. and the Wrights were burning up if they weren't flying at at least 160MPH but that was due to a bad cowling design by Boeing. I remember the battle that raged between the pilots trying to close the cowl flaps on take off and climb out and the flight engineers trying to open them to lower the CHT.

 

What the heck is that?

More importantly, where can I get one!?!?