Warbird Information Exchange

This a/c was owned by a guy named Joe Davis who was instrumental in getting together an old airfield in CA as a museum of sorts. Did the 25 ever go to this place (Dos Palos???) or straight to Ocatillo Wells from Omaha?

T J

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Joe Davis is my father. N3442G was flown from Omaha to Borrego Springs or "Ocatillo Wells" as I hear it called these days. During the 1980s he sold it to Bill Klairs who began a restoration on the aircraft but it is now in storage in Rialto. My father is no longer a partner in Aero Trader however they are still all good friends. The airfield that you are talking about is Eagle Field near Dos Palos, CA. It is a WWII primary flight training base that my father purchased in around 1980 or so. We have been slowly but surely restoring and preserving what is left of the airfield. We have a B-25J hulk that was donated by Aero Trader a number of years ago that one day we hope to have restored to a static display.

I actually have a very good video of the first flight in 20 years back in 1980 (around then). It was done on Beta video back when video was brand new but the quality was actually not bad.

N3442G on my fathers first trip to see the aircraft and dig it out of the mud


N3442G as found cockpit


N3442G they flew it back to CA after a few months of work


Aero Trader donated airframe sitting in our hangar

What is the ID of the B-25 hulk?

Jim

I think that it is sort of a mix and match of several partial airframes but officially it is 44-30761. It has some damage from when it was used in the crash scene of Forever Young.

Nice photos. I remember a photo of this a/c in Air Classics around 1980 when it had been bought by your father. I think it had been shot in Omaha!

T J

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Make my day, punk!

44-28834

There were three B-25s bought in 1958 by an aerial duster partnership that included Richard Whited. They were flown into a small duster airstrip near South Omaha, Nebraska. The dusting operation never materialized and the B-25s were stored on the airstrip through the 1950s.

The three B-25s were N3441G, N3442G, and N7669C. By the end of the 1960s the B-25s were near derelict. N3441G was donated to the SAC Museum where it was converted to a cut-away fuselage display that should still be with the museum even after it moved to Lincoln. N7669C went to a technical school where it was disassembled and disappeared from sight. And, as noted above, N3442G went to Joe Davis.

This story is related on page 31 of B-25 Mitchell in Civil Service (see also http://www.aerovintage.com/b25.htm if interested) with two photos of the strip on page 30. I had the occasion to speak with Richard Whited in the mid-1990s while writing that book. Interesting story. The duster strip is now firmly under a large subdivision.

Yes, somewhere I have pictures of all three aircraft together. I do have a picture of one of them being "hacked" up. I have a video that was taken on Betacam back when my dad picked up N3442G. It is pretty good quality for the time. It shows a very young Carl Scholl, Tony Ritzman and Joe Davis working on the aircraft, swapping out engines, doing landing gear tests and then the first fire-up taxi and first flight of the aircraft. It was a short grass strip. There was some stories on the local newspaper and television at the time in the area so there was a big crowd of people there to see it's first flight. I guess back then, people that that kind of stuff was interesting. Now days they would have called and complained about the noise (I know this from experience when we took off 11 B-25s at one time in Fresno we got a barrage of complaint calls lol).

Who did your dad actually buy the plane from?

IIRC, N3441G is still on display as a cutaway display at the "new" SAC Museum (saw it this summer, but did not note the #).

According the the FAA registration file, the airplane went from United Aerial Applicators of Papillion, Nebraska, to Midwest Seafoods of Denver, Colorado, in July 1968. Then, via court order to George Andrews and Henrietta McCandless, also of Papillion, in June 1981. It was sold the same month to Joseph Davis, then of Oxnard, CA. The Bill of Sale was dated January 1975 but legal documents recorded the date in June 1981. Sold by Davis to William Klaers and Lawrence Klaers in July 1986.

This is an extremely old post, but perhaps there are still enough active users around who can help me piece together the history of this airframe. In the interest of brevity I'm going to repost what I sent to Eagle Field on their webpage. Your assistance is greatly appreciated:

I'm attempting to locate a B-25, 44-86715, N3442G. I found a post on warbirdinformationexchange indicating it was owned by a Mr. Joe Davis and also makes reference to Eagle Field. Some photos may exist of it being patched up and flown by a Mr. Bill Muszala, but the links appear broken and the photos are no longer available. My grandfather recently passed and he trained in this aircraft. As a pilot I'm interested in it's fate and learned it may be stored in Rialto. If I'm on the right path, any assistance locating this aircraft would be appreciated.

Bill Klaers of Westpac Aviation told me a few years ago that this airframe is held in deep storage at their facility at Colorado Springs. It was moved when the company relocated from Rialto, CA.

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Scott Thompson
Aero Vintage Books
http://www.aerovintage.com
WIX Subscriber Since July 2017

The kind folks at Eagle Field responded within minutes and pointed me in that direction. It survives! This is an amazing community - thank you.

What does "deep storage" mean? Thanks....