Airplane in a Barn story... no Hangar!

[wacoykc]

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine and I became acquainted with a man who said he had a Waco he wanted to get rid of. We made arrangements to go see him and drove to the Cleveland area. We pulled up to a rather large machine shop and there inside was a 1934 Waco UKC completely assembled. It had the original bump cowl, the original 210 Continental with front exhaust, a ground-adjustable Hamilton-Standard prop and the original sheetmetal and such. Sound good???? Well, the fuselage was so rusty that it had broken at the landing gear strut attach point and was held together with chains. The wings were only good for patterns although the hardware was not bad. The complete tail was good for a pattern only as it was too rusted to use. The story is that this guy got it from a local farmer who purchased it sometime after WWII and used to like to fire it up and drive around his property. It was an ex-CAA airplane, NS19. It became a toy and just sat outside all those years. We bought it for $1800 and took it home and parted it out and junked the rest.

There is another guy here in Ohio that is a collector of sorts...cars, steam tractors, hit & miss engines, jukeboxes, etc. I heard he had a Waco and sure enough, he had a Waco 10 with an OX-5. The fuselage was on the gear with the engine mounted and he liked to just start it up every now and then just to see it run. He didn't fly, he just thought it was neat. Not for sale of course. That was in 1985 and he still has it today!

[John Dupre]

Wasn't there a case about 25 years ago that the Navy was clearing out some base somewhere and opened up a huge crate only to find a complete Japanese aircraft from WW2? It wasn't a Zero as I heard it but maybe a Nakajima something. Anyone remember it or just urban legend?

[gary1954]

Well.....if the Navy did "discover" something like that , it would be STRICKEN and dumped in the ocean where they'd dare anyone to attempt recovery

[Jesse C.]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

How about the burried Lancasters in England? Nothing?

[Second Air Force]

Jesse C,

That F-6 sounds a bit like one that was stored in a warehouse in Sioux City, Iowa. The story I was told locally was that it had been sold surplus after service with the Iowa Air Guard, disassembled, and put into storage. Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s? it was sold, I think to Mike Couches. This story was told to me second hand, but I seem to recall reading a paragraph about the discovery in Air Classics way back when it changed hands. The dates and names could all be wrong, but the story seemed to be somewhat accurate. The aircraft was supposed to be a real time capsule, exactly as it was retired from the ANG.

Scott

[Matt Gunsch]

[quote="Jesse C."]What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

It was St. Louis, and the plane is flying, known as Lil Margret

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/p51regis ... 84786.html

[Jesse C.]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

It was St. Louis, and the plane is flying, known as Lil Margret

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/p51regis ... 84786.html

Thats it! Did they cover over the photo portholes?

[Ethan]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

How about the burried Lancasters in England? Nothing?

my father told me years back he talked a guy who knew about a cave in japan that was full of zeros

[gale_dono]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

It was St. Louis, and the plane is flying, known as Lil Margret

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/p51regis ... 84786.html

Thats it! Did they cover over the photo portholes?

Nope, she's restored as a full F-6D. Replica cameras in the bays, even!

[Matt Gunsch]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

It was St. Louis, and the plane is flying, known as Lil Margret

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/p51regis ... 84786.html

Thats it! Did they cover over the photo portholes?

Jesse, you might be interested in this:

http://www.amazon.com/P-51-Mustang-Rest ... 901&sr=8-1

It is the restoration of Lil Margret

[Second Air Force]

That's the airplane! I don't exactly know how I got Sioux City mixed up with St. Louis--the memory must be going. Thanks for filling in the blanks, Matt.

Scott

[John Dupre]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

How about the burried Lancasters in England? Nothing?

my father told me years back he talked a guy who knew about a cave in japan that was full of zeros

How about the legendary German underground hangar still full of airplanes even though it is flooded? I know this one is true as I once knew a US Army veteran who was based there in the 1960s. I have also read several articles a few years ago about an attempt to enter the hangar and see what was there. Never heard if it ever happened. The story was the whole place was booby trapped at the end of the war and no one wanted to defuse the place and now the explosives are considered so deterioated that it is too dangerous.

[gary1954]

What ever happend to the cave in the Pacific full of stuff? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Quite a few years back I read an article about a guy who had a Photo Recon Mustang in his garage and how the author found it. Anyone remember that one?

How about the burried Lancasters in England? Nothing?

my father told me years back he talked a guy who knew about a cave in japan that was full of zeros

How about the legendary German underground hangar still full of airplanes even though it is flooded? I know this one is true as I once knew a US Army veteran who was based there in the 1960s. I have also read several articles a few years ago about an attempt to enter the hangar and see what was there. Never heard if it ever happened. The story was the whole place was booby trapped at the end of the war and no one wanted to defuse the place and now the explosives are considered so deterioated that it is too dangerous.

I believe the underground stuff is true, I was stationed in Germany 77-82 of the last century, and a 2-1/2 ton truck was parked on one of the back streets on the Installation, when the driver and passenger got out...slamming the doors of the truck, the slight vibration through the truck was enough to reach the street, where the pavement under the truck collapsed, and the truck fell straight down a story and a half into an under ground tunnel.
I found the Flak Gun sites on our airfield, and the stairs that decended below the surface level from the gun platforms, were blocked closed. There is supposed to be underground hangars at Fliergerhorst (which means Flyers Nest) Kassern near Hanau.
I ran into a scuba diver over there that said that he had entered the underground hangar under Fliegerhorst and there was equipment and aircraft completely submerged 109 and 190 type. The water was definitely contaminated with petro products, his wetsuit was slimmy with oils when he exited.
He showed me the area at which he entered the underground, but that was almost 30 years ago, and I am sure a lot has changed over there. Now, the stories about no one messing with these areas, I believe is bogus.
If the hangars were "knowingly" booby trapped, the US Government would not allow anything to be built over them. In Schwabish Hall, Germany, while the engineers were doing a little grading, they said "near the POL site", they discovered a US 500 pounder from WWII, they evacuated the entire Installation.
I believe that Scab Hall was also the site where they built either the V1 or V2 rockets underground to avoid being targeted by the the Allies and us. When I was there you could still see the ventaltion stacks sticking up from the ground, and gary1954 isn't into repelling into a black hole for nuthin'. Okay...I'm done

[Kaigun Fan]

Hello,

One of the unrestored Zero fighters that Paul Allen owns spent many years in a backyard (!) stored outside in I believe, Atlanta, GA. There used to be some cool shots of her on the j-aircraft.com website but couldn't find them today.

Hence, this airframe suffered a lot of corrosion because of being stored outside so many years postwar - what a shame.

Ron W.

www.beyondpearlharbor.com

[gary1954]

Ron, I believe I saw a picture of that aircraft in *pukes* Air Classics *pukes* back in the mid 1970's lying on its belly. it had been vandalized quite extensively as I recall.