This thread may only appeal to two or three of you WIXers. I apologize for boring the rest of you with my blathering but here goes.
Ellen and I are at the early stages of restoring a WWII Saginaw M-5 bomb trailer that will eventually end up in the collection of the McCook Army Airbase Historical Society in southwestern Nebraska. McCook AAF was a Second and Third Phase Training Base in the Second Air Force and had both B-24 and B-29 Groups rotate through. The current plan is to put seats on the trailer and use it as our "tour bus" for guided tours at the Base.
Don Kerr, a Concordia, Kansas Marine Corps veteran (trained as a Pratt & Whitney mechanic but ended up as a ground soldier in the Pacific) generously donated the trailer to our group. The following photos were taken at the former Concordia POW Camp that housed German prisoners from mid '43 to after the end of hostilities. Mr. Kerr has owned Building T-9, the Quartermaster warehouse, for many years.
Ellen and Don Kerr looking over the trailer during our first visit to the site. The tower in the background is the support for the 100,000 gallon redwood water tank that served the POW camp. The enlisted prisoner barracks were clustered around the tower area.
Here is a shot of the data plate and equipment number. Taigh, we have determined that the equipment number is 0195321 and the serial number is 4817.
After putting new deck lumber on our little car trailer we headed back up to Concordia to retrieve our project. After removing the metal that had been laid on top of the deck we found the original oak planks still in place. The trailer had been used as a hay wagon on a local farm for many years after being sold surplus at Fort Leavenworth, and I doubt it ever saw a shed, so we were surprised to see so much lumber still intact. Sadly the wood crumbled when you disturbed it, but Elly was able to measure the width of the planks before we removed them.
Our plan was to expect the worst when it came to moving the trailer. I don't think Mr. Kerr had moved the thing for over ten years and we suspected that the tires wouldn't hold air. We were correct. What I didn't think about was the brakes. I still haven't got them unstuck.
We used the cherry picker to lift the front of the trailer high enough to back under. This thing is heavier than it looks.
The next step was to use these furniture skates under the nose wheels as a way to roll the beast forward on the other trailer. The castering feature of the front wheels is stuck at a 90 degree angle and made things a bit interesting.
Now all we needed to do was lift the rear high enough to remove the wheels and clear the side frames of the other trailer. I'm sure glad I didn't throw away my bike stands when I retired from motocross racing.
And there you have it--we just had to load our equipment and head back home. I'll post updates once we get started with the actual restoration in the next few weeks.
Scott
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