Warbird Information Exchange

Might be interesting for some of you.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13 ... f=category


The Canberra B-57 Medium Bomber is the predecessor spy plane to the U-2 and the SR-71 spy planes and was last used by NASA.

The Northern California Veterans Museum has just taken possession of this 1952 Canberra Mark-4 Bomber, we are in need of funding to remove the wings and transport the aircraft to the new Museum location and to repaint and restore the aircraft and engines for public display. This aircraft was used for counter espionage in it's early days and last used by NASA as a Meteorologic platform studying weather around the world. The aircraft will be paint back to the original B-57 Bomber color scheme; midnight gloss black with US Air Force gold lettering. It will be housed inside of the Museum, safeguarded and protected from the outside elements. Please help us restore this awesome piece of history for future generations and in memory of the men who flew her. Thank you, Rob Burroughs

From the picture it looks like A84-229, an Aussie bird, will she be painted in her RAAF colours or given a Yank paint scheme?

Info copied and pasted from http://www.adf-gallery.com.au/

First flight 22/11/56.
Delivered 23/04/57.
Served with 2 Squadron based at Butterworth Malaysia.
Noel Fenton reports "When Canberra A84-229 was at ARDU (1959), it was undergoing trials (deployed to Darwin) relating to the venting to atmosphere of the fuselage fuel tanks. Unfortunately, the test engineer (we used to call him NASA as at that time, everything NASA did, did not work) installed the vents incorrectly, ie., the wrong way around. During flight tests, instead of venting to atmosphere, No3 fuselage fuel tank was pressurised and expanded into the bomb-bay fouling the elevator and rudder control rods and caused the 'freezing' of control of the elevator and rudder. The pilot (a USAF Major on exchange to ARDU) landed the aircraft using the electric trim on both control surfaces. As well, the fuselage also 'expanded' giving what we called a Canberra with an 'area rule' fuselage. It was disassembled in Darwin and flown to Avalon in a Hercules for major repair and modification after which it was returned to ARDU. As well, I can recall the testing of the fitting of bomb hangers and supports (for 500 pound iron bombs) on the wing-tips in lieu of the tip-tanks to 229 in 1966. Initially, there were a few problems relating to stress at the wing-tip, but these were overcome. The bombs were dropped using the wing-tip fuel tank 'dump' button and was prior to Canberras being deployed to Vietman. There are many 'photo's of Canberras in Vietnam showing this fittment."
Struck off 1982 at Amberley.
06/82 allocated to RAAF museum in airworthy condition.
In exchange for A84-229 Aero Nostalgia provided a Lockheed Ventura for the RAAF museum.
Aero Nostalgia was unable to take delivery and it remained at Amberley from 1982 untill 1990 when Steve Picatti purchased it from Aero Nostalgia and ferried it to USA 08/08/90 as N20AN. Now N229CA.
Appeared at Oshkosh 07/1991.
Returned to Australia to appear at the 1991 RAAF Richmond airshow, 1992 Avalon International Airshow and perform at the Adelaide Formula One Grand Prix on 05/11/92.
Returned to USA during 03/93.
Reported as subject of legal dispute and ownership changed to Tom Leek.
Reportedly damaged when it suffered an accidental landing gear retraction whilst parked.
Registered to Jack Stringer of California 28/03/00.
Noted in Australian Aviation 11/04 as being parked in the GA area of Redding Airport, California as of 04/08/2004.
Currently under restoration and will hopefully return to the skies.

So the picture on the kickstarter page is not the Canberra they are restoring?

And it's clearly not a Martin B-57 if it has such extensive RAAF history?