Warbird Information Exchange

Randy... always welcome to visit. We will save you something to do for sure. Won't be hard!! Lot to do, but we can take a break to feed you some good Texas BBQ. Come on out. VA is too cold right now for sure. BTW, I went to Houston today for the retirement party of Astronaut Jerry Ross. Before acceptance in the astronaut corps, he was an AF Flight Test Engineer at Edwards and one of his adventures involved flying the A-26 test bed with variable/stability/controls. It later crashed after he had moved on to the B-1A test program. Knew Jerry before he became famous as the first astronaut to fly 7 times in the Shuttle program. He started the construction of the International Space Station which has been extended to 2020 or more now for continued operations. His last position was as Chief of Astronaut Safety and Friday, Jan 20th is his last day. There was quite a turnout of his friends and colleagues. Anyway, Jerry and his son Scott are very interested in our A-26 project and have promised to come see us. Looking forward to that. Cheers, Jim R.

Today was a big red letter one. The rudder was finally removed after many grunts and groans!! It turned out to be a little heavier than we estimated. Took 8 people to carry it over to the work table. Good thing we got some strong backs in this bunch. The manlift did the trick though for the pull and bringing it down to where we could tackle it. What a relief this was for the team. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mark made a lot of progress getting the left main wheel well blasted. He found 3 layers of paint with the bottom one being black and a new placard or two. JR got the last zerk fitting drilled out that was bad in the left main gear. We are just waiting for the plating job on the outer cylinder to come back to start going together with that. Lots of sheet metal work was done today. Clay and Miguel started on a size 42D patch in the leading edge. Mike thought it was closer to a 34C, but does size really matter? We are going to cover it all up with bondo and warpaint anyway. Tim got the formation lights finished on the top of the wings, not that they were ever used in the Unpleasantness in Southeast Asia, but since they are part of the original equipment, we want them to be capable of working. Stevo started making a doubler for one of the small frames behind the cockpit canopy area that has two small areas of corrosion. Arnold and Big Mike removed most of the ignition components on the right or as Arnold (old Navy) says, the starboard side. Amy, Rand, Denis and David did most of the aerial work to get the rudder ready to pull, but it took everybody to do the final pull and lay it down on the table. There are some ugly old repairs done on the top that appears to be from hangar rash along with some on the sides and some dings that should have been repaired, but Clay can knock those out with his magic touch with metal.
Today, we were blessed to have a visit from a WWII vet who was a navigator on B-17's and B-29's. He was in training at Alamogordo, NM, when the first atomic bomb was tested. He said they saw the flash and wondered what the heck that was, but were not told until much later about it. He later flew on C-124's to Viet Nam. Isn't it great to get first hand stories like that? You never know who will drop by. Don't miss out. Come see us some Saturday and watch our progress!! Cheers, Jim R PS. Did I mention how happy we are to have the rudder off the airplane??

For those who wondered what our Rudder Conga Line looked like..... Jim R

I noticed that our Special K has now gone over 27,000 views on the forum. Just wanted to say thanks for the interest and we will keep updating the work as it progresses and she returns to flight. Please check out our website at http://www.gga1.org for more information about all of our airplanes. Click on the A-26K picture to go to our new page on the Greatest Generation website. It is still under construction but filling up quickly. There are bios of some of our volunteers with more to follow. We are lucky to have some of most dedicated and talented folks working very hard on the project. Just wanted to say thanks to these people as well. Come see us any Saturday at Meacham Field in the Vintage Flying Museum hangar on the southeast corner of the airport. Always glad to see visitors and show them our airplanes. Incidentally, the B-25 is in for winter maintenance and the landing gear SB is being addressed. The C-47 comes in for winter maintenance as well. We are gearing up to have both ready for the Laredo, TX airshow on Feb 11-12. Cheers, Jim R

I was asked recently just how Special K will be painted. It will be back to the VN era flat black bottom and 3 shade camo on top. Like the picture above except we will have the stars and bars on the wings and fuselage as this was the way it was used in training at Hurlburt and England AFB. It will also carry the IF tail code which was for England located at Alexandria, LA. Yep, she spent part of her life as a Ragin Cajun which she could do very well with 8 50's, 4000 lbs under each wing and 4000 in the bomb bay. I betcha there were some NVA truck drivers in Laos who absolutely dreaded hearing the sound of those R2800's with the props out of sync. Several Nimrod pilots have mentioned this was done to confuse the anti aircraft gunners because the out of sync sounds made it more difficult to tell where they were coming from. Out of the black sky came napalm and "Funny bombs" Trivia question of the week. What is a "Funny Bomb" and what exactly did it do?? We will find out who the detectives are amongst us. Have a good rest of the week!! Jim R PS... Former gunplumbers are not eligible to play... hear that Randy? That would be too easy for you guys!!

Wasn't the funny bomb some sort of thermite cluster napalm thing?

Scary bomb!

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Zane Adams
There I was at 20,000 ft, upside down and out of ammunition.
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..............PS... Former gunplumbers are not eligible to play... hear that Randy? That would be too easy for you guys!................

Actually, the funny bombs weren't used until after the Big Eagle troops had left. Never saw one. We also never used the "Daisy Cutters" while I was there. Can usually kind of date a picture of one of the NKP 26's by the type and configuration of the ordnance it was carrying.
Randy

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

To Zane: You are getting warmer about the "Funny bomb".... keep trying!!! Elaborate just a bit more. Bueller, Bueller, anyone, anyone??

Randy brings up a very good point. For those who don't know, there were several evolutions of test programs of the A-26 K's at NKP. Project Big Eagle came before the 609th Special Ops Squadron was given the mission of interdicting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The 609th continued experimenting with various kinds of ordinance to see which would have maximum effect for the least exposure of the aircraft to ground fire during the darkest hours of the night. Obviously rockets and machine guns would be blinding to the crews and put a big ol spotlight on where they came from. So now back to the "Funny Bombs" there are bonus points for who can tell me where the 609th "procured" them and how. With regards to napalm, why were fins added to the canisters later in the war? That is question 2 for the night. Jim R

Since no one else answered, the Funny Bombs were the old WWII M35 & M36 Incendiary Bombs that had a combination of CBU-style bomblets, napalm, and White Phosphorous incendiaries. From the descriptions I've read, it would've been one hell of a thing to see.

We talked about them a little bit when Jason was looking for information to build a replica - http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.o ... =3&t=41641

Ewwwww, very close, red hot. Now if you can tell us the story of where the Nimrods came up with these Funny Bombs and how they magically appeared at NKP without going thru the usual military channels, you will be the top detective of the year. Speaking of Funny Bombs, Maj Al Shortt, USAF Nimrod, shows how they were loaded in the bomb bay of a K model at NKP in the picture above. And speaking of clues, go to the Nimrod Legacy website that was started by the sons and daughters of these brave guys. Don Vogler is the webmaster. His dad was one of these pilots. http://www.A-26legacy.org. Check out his pics and stories. You can also go find Col. Roger Graham's book on the Nimrod experience entitled, "The Nimrods". More about this later, but Roger and I both had vital missions on 25 Oct 1968. He was flying his last combat mission over Laos that night. I was attending to the birth of my middle daughter at the same time. I am not sure which experience was the roughest. He only had antiaircraft fire, dark mountains and people with hostile intent to deal with. Well, I guess you just had to be there or undergo similar to understand my part. I was wishing I had the number for a Priest to come do an exorcism cause something definitely got a hold of my wife. I still have nightmares of spinning heads and throwing up green slime. BTW, mine, not hers. But I digress. How bout those Funny Bombs? Mah Best, Jim R. PS, We want a replica Funny Bomb to hang in the bomb bay of K. Any builders out there willing to make us one??

Ask O-2 Karen if her "armorer" could come up with some. My "armorer" don't like to do inert!

Jim, I'd ask Jason who brought up the previous thread and I linked to in my reply.

BTW, the bombs in that photo are M32s which were used early on before M35s and M36s became the normal payload.

As I said earlier, I never saw a funny bomb, but saw plenty of what's hanging in front of them. That most definitely is the M120 Frag clusters,( if I remember the number right). 6 x 20# fragmentation bombs strapped to a steel frame. Upon release, the bombs separated from the frame when they cleared the bomb bay. Don't think we ever carried a "mixed" load like shown, usually just 12 clusters as I remember. 72 of those suckers coming down was a lot of shrapnel to be dodging. You can see the serations on the bomb case in the picture.
I specifically remember the frag clusters, as there was an incident on the ramp one day. I wasn't on the ramp at the time, but was told that a crew chief was doing something in the cockpit and somehow accidentally "shorted out" the bomb bay jettison switch, and the whole load dumped on the ramp. Nothing happened, EOD came and cleaned up, and all was well. Only thing that brought was a new directive that all aircraft that were loaded would have the battery cables removed while sitting on the ramp. That became a real PIA for us, having to go reconnect the batteries to do basically anything to the plane. I never really understood how it happened in the first place. I always thought that the "ground override" switch in the nose wheel well had to be "on" for anything on the armament system to work on the ground.????????????? Guess it's also plausible that the ground override accidentally got left on.
Randy

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

I got a question??? Did you guys also partake in dropping listening devices along the trail???

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

Above is the coveted 100 mission patch. Rotation home didn't depend on the number, but rather the length of the tour. Still, imagine going out over 100 times in the dark looking for truck drivers who didn't really appreciate your appearance and usually had their friends along for a hostile reception. Ah, somebody looked at the Funny Bomb photo close enough to read the M-32!! Sharp Eye!! These were the most often used by the Nims and were 500 lbs of pure destruction for trucks. M-35's were 750 lbs and were in too short of supply, but when used, could make even an bigger mess for the NVA to clean up. How would you have liked to have been an NVA grunt and have some Sgt. come tell you to go take care of that every morning? One bomb could cover about the size of a football field. The A-26's usually carried two of these in the bomb bay. They were so valuable that strict orders were given never to use them unless a positive sighting of trucks was made. In other words, you couldn't use them to hit a suspected truck park to flush them out. A known target had to be there. More about this later. Jim R