Warbird Information Exchange

As I understand it from local sources, there was only ever the B-26 cockpit in Watson's Lake, the aircraft crashed there during the war, the rest was scrapped but the cockpit was used as a training aid and then dumped in the Lake at the end of the war.

There IS a fuselage still in million dollar valley without a cockpit, unrelated to the Watsons Lake cockpit, this fuselage was left by Tallechet with only its cockpit being removed to replace a poorer cockpit on one of the "better" fuselages.

Although both aircraft staged through Watsons Lake during WW2, thats the only relationship.

regards

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

Thanks for the info, looks like they are all gone unless one turns up in a lake some where in Cananda or Alaska. With regard to the million dollar valley B-26s, Dik Shepherd was on that recovery mission with DT, he is very knowledgable on the recovery of them.

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

Mark, are you sure about the fourth Million Dollar Valley B-26? I have only ever heard of three aircraft being involved in that incident, but would love to be proven wrong. I do know that Tallichet replaced the nose of one of the aircraft with that of another, but that happened during the restoration as far as I know.

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

FOF not POF sry, i was writing a paper on Faust, brain fried. you all rule, sugar hot, great info!

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-recovering Viper crew chief
-AWACS driver/soon-to-be A-26 driver
-displaced Philadelphian

yes, I'm sure there is one left, I have seen (and posted) photos of it on this forum but cant find them at the moment! searching for it found this previous discussion by others:

http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14002&hilit=million+dollar




I will keep looking and post the link/photo when I find it.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

Here is the aircraft that became the Watsons Lake cockpit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23057174@N02/3712690275/



Regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

and finally here is the previous WIX discussion regarding the remaining B-26 Fuselage at Million Dollar Valley, apparantly photographed in 1983 so perhaps it is now gone????, but it was there after the 3 Tallichet aircraft were recovered.

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=28067&view=previous

I have previously copied the same pics into other B-26 survivor threads as this fuselage is apparantly missing its cockpit so it, the Watsons Lake Cockpit and the PNG airframe would be a great 8th project outcome.





It apparantly had its cockpit removed to complete one of the three that Tallichet did recover:



Regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

I was gone from the home orafice when I got a message from Dik regarding the Million Dollar deal. Since he was there, and sent me an email on the subject, I asked him if I could pass his information on to you guys.

"Hey there:

In regards to the third B-26 fuselage in Million Dollar Valley, all that's left is the aft-section (sans vertical and horizontal stabilizers) and the mid-secton (sans wings). Both sections, particularly the mid-section, were heavily damaged during the crash landing (the bomb bay was severally crushed from the bottom) which is the reason they were not recovered.

As far as the wings are concerned, Tallichet sent a second crew years later to remove them and they weren't exactly nice about it. Instead of disconnecting them (like we did) they cut them off with a chainsaw, into the bomb bay.

Another Japanese aircraft that's being restored at The Air Museum, that no-one seems to know much about, is a JUDY. I don't know if it's an inline or a radial version and it's not out in the open so the public can see it, but a few months ago I saw it when I went there to see Ed Maloney."
Shepherd

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

mark, you are the best! i will give this info to the people i know with the means to make this happen (not me)..


awesome awesome, sH!!t hot, awesome!

you can make ANYTHING a flyer with enough determination, hard work, and smarts.

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-recovering Viper crew chief
-AWACS driver/soon-to-be A-26 driver
-displaced Philadelphian

I believe this aircraft was covered in Classic Wings a while back.

I saw those two noses in a storage yard out in the desert the day after I'd seen the airplane parked at Aero Trader so no, the nose on the flyer came from one of the other airplanes in Million Dollar Valley. But if you took one of them and stuck it on that other fuselage that's still up there you'd have most of a fuselage.

Dan

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

Glad to be of help, I'm not sure if that piece is still sitting there, but B-26 bits are too rare to have it rotting away when there are spare cockpits floating around!

I hope your contacts are able to achieve an outcome.

regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

From 1990 to 1993 I was an almost every Saturday hang out kid at Chino, and I researched a lot of info and on this stuff for articles and my own files.

The cockpit section of the ex flyer 1464 is from one of the other Million Dollar airplanes, 1501. This was flown by Glenn Doolittle, who lived in San Diego county until his passing a few years ago. I called him about 20 years ago, he wasn't very sentimental about his WWII exploits, but he was a very friendly, nice guy. He told a funny story that bases would get word that "Doolittle" was coming, roll out the red carpet and out stepped Glenn, who was not related! The two noses came from Chino itself when it was a scrapping yard after the war. One of the noses was four serial numbers away from the crashed CAF aircraft Carolyn.

Oh and the one Saturday I decided not to go to Chino during those three years? April 18, 1992, the Marauder's first flight. That was devastating.

Made up for it a year later being the first to shoot it air to air, but still, missing the first flight in 50 years sucked!

that is a major bummer but you mad up for it majorly. did you shoot the stuff that's in the old air classics?

_________________
-recovering Viper crew chief
-AWACS driver/soon-to-be A-26 driver
-displaced Philadelphian