Warbird Information Exchange

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I just returned from a 5 day holiday at Cairns in far north Queensland.

While most of my holiday was touring the tropical rainforest or snorkling on the Great Barrier Reef I managed to squeeze in one aviation related sight-see which was to Syd Beck's War Museum at Mareeba, @ 60km inland from Cairns.

Syd's collection covers both military vehicles and aircraft, and is located in a rare WW2 wooden igloo hangar he relocated from Townsville.

The aircraft collection is centred around his prize possession, a USAF P-39D 41-6951 which forced landed on Cape York during a ferry flight to PNG of 6 P-39's in 1942, and is one of two that survived to be recovered in 1972 and be subsequently restored.

http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/1may42.htm


Both were found largely intact, with cannon amunition still in place in the nose, unfortunately resulting in the Australian Army detonating the shells in situ to make the aircraft safe, causing significant and serious damage to the airframes in that area.

Its twin is now with Murray Griffith at Wangaratta undergoing restoration to fly.


The aircraft collection also includes a Sea Venom, Canberra, RAN Bristol Sycamore, Neptune and C-47, along with V1 and Wildcat replicas, wreckage from a B-26, B-25 and damaged Wackett Trainer fuselage, along with an extensive engine collection.


The vehicle collection includes WW2 Blitz and dodge trucks, matilda, grant and centurian tanks.

I will post a few more photos in subequent posts - enjoy












seems to be a problem with posting these pics, see them at :

http://www.warbirdz.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75

regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

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Not sure why my photo links arnt showing here? but I put up some more photos on the Warbirdz site.

Its an impressive collection representing one man's preservation efforts over a lifetime.

The additional photos gives an overview of the rest of the collection, including the rest of the aircraft including two Sea Venoms, the Canberra, the Neptune, the Sycamore, the C47 and the burnt out Wackett Trainer fuselage.

along with some further photos showing some of the aero engine and military vehicle collections.

Interesting and rare items include the Seagull V Pegasus engine and the Seagull III mainwheel, as well as some wartime wreckage from a B-26, B-25 and Zero.

Its an impressive effort just to have preserved one of these rare timber igloo Hangars from WW2 in the Pacific.

This igloo Hangar was originally designed and built to house B-17's during overhaul.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

http://www.warbirdz.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

Wow! Quite the collection. A lot of gear packed in there. Needs another hangar so the displays are not on top each other. Getting good pic with available lighting looked to be a bit of an issue as well.

Pics have to have a ".jpg" file extension to show up.

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The images were uploaded onto the KP forum, and hotlinked into the warbirdz forum using the [img] command successfully, but apparantly unable to be repeated here with the same command, I guess its a particular limitation of the version of phpBB used here?

regards

Mark Pilkington

_________________
20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"