Warbird Information Exchange

A few tiny bits lying around Australia somewhere> RAAF operated them for a period in the recce role. Crashed a couple and handed the rest back to the AAF in Oz. Same for Buffaloes...

I can't answer your question but you might find the following of interest. In January 1946 the War Assets Administration (WAA) had two P-43s for sale; one at Augusta, Georgia and the other at Ontario(Chino), California. The price was $1,250 - the same as for a P-38 or P-40. This was a lot of money at the time and the P-43 probably had limited or no parts available and little chance of being licensed by the FAA. There is no record of the FAA ever assigning an IBM Code Number to the P-43 so that would indicate to me that none were ever registered. I photographed the one at Ontario (P-43C, 40-2894) on May 21, 1946. I'll attach a photo if it works.

Hello,
With regard to the P-43, I was wondering what happened to Lancer A56-6 whose wreakage was located in 1958 in the Healesville Hills, north-east of Melbourne. Was the wreck kept, scrapped, or is it possibly in storage at the RAAF museum?

According to this site it was A56-7

http://www.adf-serials.com/2a56.shtml

Yes there are still some P-43's out there!
Many were lost due to fuel leaks and supercharger fires. These were often pilot bail out so there is nothing left of these and the records should indicate which ones you can mark off the list.
The ones over in the combat zones would have been bulldozed into a ravine, sink hole or whatever.
The P-43 Lancer had nasty landing qualities. My friend the late COl. James Haun said he saw a flight of 8 come in for landing at I believe Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1941. They were factory new being flown by ferry pilots. All eight of them were rolled into balls as they groundlooped in a fierce crosswind. COl. Haun said the problem was that the P-43 couldn't be safely three pointed, you had to wheel it on every time. THe P-43 would fully stall before reaching the three point landing attitude. (a design flaw).
The Army started simplifying their inventory in 1943 and started getting rid of the odd ball types like the PT-22, PT-20, DC-2, B-18, Lockheed Sirius, Monocoupes, etc. Check the U.S Army Air bases where these birds were stationed. Just like the Brewster's stationed here at Tullahoma, when they became obsolete and easily replaceable with better equipment, the Army Air Corps simply pushed them in a hole somewhere or in the woods at a base.
Last week , I went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to see Dan Petersen, their museum curator about a Fairchild C-119G they have for sale and noticed there were two WW I artillery field pieces in the storage lot. The curator said they had been found in the woods recently. He also said a couple of months ago they traced a lead and found a WW II self propelled howitzer in the woods and the same source said he also had seen two WW II half-tracks in the woods. Fort Campbell has several thousand acres.
I guarantee that one of the former bases that had P-43 's has a number of them pushed in a ditch somewhere, now grown up with trees. Particulary since they had such a high landing accident rate.