Moving forward to the 1960s and 70s in Western Australia.There was a pilot and aircraft enthusiast called John Bell of Albany, Western Australia. He found that a Vultee Vengeance aircraft that had been allocated to the Albany flight of the Air Training Corps from 6/11/51 to 9/07/58 and that was A27-41, MK 1a, R.A.F., EZ925. After the needs of the Air Training Corps were met it was struck off charge on the 12/12/58 and scrapped at Albany. The following information comes from John Bell in a letter heading of Albany Aviation, Flying School, Aircraft Hire and Charter that was sent to Mervyn W. Prime of the Aircraft Historical Group in Perth on the 25/7/71. In this letter he states that on the parts he recovered from the Albany Vengeance A27-41, he could not find any constructors number and plus a lot of plates and small items had been removed, also the same applied to the serial number. The fuselage had been chopped in half and the tail section destroyed, he obtained a replacement from Kalgoorlie, presumably the one from A27-247. Everything forward of the firewall had been removed before it reached Albany and he assumed that they are the items he located at Perth Airport (Possibly the Wright Cyclone engine that is mentioned in one document as the one he obtained from the Midland Technical College). A search of the local area in Albany in the 1960s according to John Bells recollections that most of the airframe was still laying about backyards, plus farms and after a great deal of detective work, plus physical work, he managed to collect these items. Although one document did say that the tailplane went to the Midland Technical College. These aircraft parts of A27-41 look like it could have been the first aircraft that John Bell had found. In this letter he states that if a museum is built by the Air Force Association in Perth, that he would donate his Vultee Vengeance. This is the first letter to state his wishes in 1971. He then recovered the cockpit fuselage section, plus stub wings that belonged to a Vengeance A27-247, Northrop built MK IIa , R.A.F., serial AF929 from a Kalgoorlie scrap yard in 1966. A lot of parts were missing, which included the engine, propeller, wing flaps, undercarriage, tail wheel, canopies, bomb bay doors and a long list of various other parts. But this was the first recognised serial number of any frames. Now when you talk about recovering fuselages from these Vultee Vengeances it is not what you would call fuselages, but cockpit sections of hulks not properly unbolted but cut with an axe or metal grinder and also oxy-acetylene, but you will find in all cases of the section of fuselages found, that a section from the rear gunners cockpit to the tail of these aircraft was missing. Unfortunately there are no seperate photographs of the parts of A27-41.
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