Sandbar Mitchell, how much recovered?

[Fouga23]

I find this to be a very exciting restoration Anyone here who can tell how much was recovered of the original airframe? I counted the bomb bay section with wing, and some tail parts that showed up somewhere? Any other parts? I think the current cockpit that goes with it was bought separately?

[Jeremy S]

Shoot them a message and ask: https://www.facebook.com/Sandbarmitchell/

[Blackbirdfan]

I think they managed to get a large portion of the original plane. It took them some looking, but they have quite a bit of the original. They also found an amazing lend-lease bird that was on its way to Russia before having a failure and going no further than I think Fairbanks Ak. That bird has turned out to have parts that are in amazing contition such as the center section.
From their FB page.


Looks like they have the center section, nose section, parts of the tail. I look forward to seeing this project fly. Its a worthy project on many levels. I wished I lived back there to help out.

Will

[warbird_patrick]

Hey all,

When we recovered Sandbar Mitchell back in 2013 we did recover all that was left from the aircraft which included the complete center section with engine nacelles and landing gear, gear doors, flaps, the rear fuselage but cut in parts and about 55% of the forward fuselage. We were able to track down a lot of the parts that were removed including the tail group, glass nose, control surfaces and various other parts. The original cockpit section which was cut off is currently in Hawthorne California and the owner will not part with it. The engines were removed back after the accident by the original owner. The main airframe parts we still have not located are the outer wing panels which were cut off. All in all Sandbar Mitchell will fly with a large portion of her original airframe.

As for the Lend-Lease Mitchell 44-28898 it is a cool part of History as it is an unmodified airframe. After its gear-up Landing in Nome Alaska aroumd 9-3-44 it was stripped out for parts and then moved to the dump. Sadly this airframe does have some pretty severe corrosion in the Wing spars and throughout internal sections. Our plan while restoring Sandbar Mitchell is to restore the Lend-Lease aircraft the static condition.

A big part of our program besides restoring the B-25 is our youth mentorship program which teaches kids shop discipline, toolmsnship, machine quipment operation, CNC, computer aided design engineering, and aircraft maintenance. As new students come into the museum they will have the opportunity to work with adult mentors on the Russian aircraft getting the necessary skills to work on the flying aircraft.

I encourage all of you to visit our website as well as our Facebook page. There's a lot of exciting information on both. With the right support we hope to break ground this year on a permanent home for Sandbar Mitchell and the Student Mentorship program at the Livingston County Airport in Howell Michigan.

Here is a great article telling our story that was just published by EAA

http://inspire.eaa.org/2018/01/03/prese ... eneration/

[CoastieJohn]

Good post!

Are you able to divulge why the nose section owner in Cali did not want to sell/donate that piece of it? Just curious.

[Fouga23]

Thanks for the reply! You have more then I thought! Hope the owner of the cockpit section will part with it someday. Maybe swap for the Ebay cockpit?

[Jeremy S]

Patrick,

Is the cockpit that you had on display at Oshkosh the Hawthorne California cockpit?