Another mystery B-23: NC49892

[Chris Brame]

This may be a tough one: Searching through the Wisconsin History site I found photos of a B-23 I've never seen before:




A little Googling brought me to an International Harvester collector's page on Facebook with more info:

The "Harold F. McCormick," International Harvester's corporate Airplane. in 1948. WHS Photo
According to an article in the June-July 1955 issue of "Harvester World" magazine [pg.21], International Harvester's first corporate plane was a converted B-23 light bomber. W.R. [Bill] Dotter became the head of International Harvester's air fleet.

Now the mystery: Not only is NC49892 not a former or current registration among known survivors, it's not listed on any B-23 on the Baugher list. One possible clue is that 39-59, last registered as N86E, was originally NC49891; perhaps the same broker registered and sold it? Over to the experts...
(Images credited to Wisconsin Historical Society)

[Robbie Stuart]

Chris, this one has me "stumped" too. Something I did run across in my search was, that it seems in June of 1950, the co-pilot of the aircraft a Mr. Walter G. Daiber was unfortunately killed at Midway Airport when struck by one of the propellers as the aircraft was warming up for a trip to Bridgeport Conn.
I'll keep digging.
Robbie

[FITD]

Geoff Goodall on his website has in his Warbirds Directory listings a B-23 with a "Restricted test registration NR49892".

Is this the aircraft in question? He says C/n 2716 which became N1G.

FITD

[Chris Brame]

Interesting; c/n 2716 was 39-30 but the Registry here and the Baugher lists show it as NR48909 and N1G. Does Goodall's list mention all three numbers? For what it's worth, note how several (but not all) of the added windows (as well as the pitot tubes, ADF football, and mount for the ADF loop) seem to match the ones on Kermit Weeks' plane, which was an ex-Pan Am bird. Pan Am didn't keep any of their Dragons for very long, except for 39-31.

[FITD]

The Geoff Goodall information for his Douglas listings can be found at this web address;

http://www.goodall.com.au/warbirds-dire ... ouglas.pdf

If you do a Find/Search using 49892 his listing should appear.

FITD