Warbird Information Exchange

Veteran's home is a tribute to aircraft

Commentary by Gail Kerr
THE TENNESSEAN

There are guns in Pony Maples' basement. Big guns, and airplanes large enough to hold them.

His pretty, modest brick home is just a stone's throw from the governor's mansion in Oak Hill. There are no clues, except an American flag snapping in the breeze, about what's inside.

Most neighbors have pool tables and flat-screen TVs in their dens. Maples has a .50-caliber machine gun.

"I've checked with all the other kids on the block," said Maples, 76. "I'm the only one with a P-51 fuselage in his basement."

He really does have a full-size P-51 Mustang fuselage in his basement, with a working vintage engine he found on eBay — out of Switzerland. And a $47,000 tailpiece for that, his most beloved plane. Maples hopes to reconstruct the P-51 down the road, the darling of fighter pilots everywhere.

"The wing is still in North Dakota," Maples said. "It has turned out to be a very expensive airplane."

For 14 years, the retired fighter pilot has been building his own World War II museum. It has no name. Admission is free. But Maples will show anybody what he's got, from kids to WWII fighter pilots. If you are currently enlisted, he'll serve lunch.

The museum now takes up every inch of his downstairs — three large rooms filled with flak jackets, parachute silks, side arms, newspaper clippings, vintage posters, dog tags and an original record of Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition.

"Here's the song," Maples pointed out. "And here's the ammunition."

You can still belly up to the den bar, but you'll have to push airplane models out of the way to lean on it.

Learned to fly in a day

Maples, who was a jet fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, fell in love with airplanes as a little boy growing up on Amelia Island, Fla. He learned to fly in one day, in an Aeronca Champion he bought for $400. He still cannot understand why his girlfriend at the time would not go up with him.

At age 12, he and a buddy bought a surplus "Gibson Girl" emergency transmitter for $1.50. With a hand crank, a serviceman in World War II could send out a signal to help rescuers find him.

"We started cranking out SOS," Maples recalled. "Finally, they found us. And I was in deep yogurt. They smashed it."

He joined the Navy in Jacksonville, Fla., at the age of 17, serving on an anti-submarine squadron.

"Then I went into the Air Force for four years and became a jet fighter pilot," Maples said. "So I came to love weapons and airplanes."

He never saw combat, but has enormous respect and reverence for those who did. That is quickly obvious on his museum tour.

First stop? A model replica of the type of torpedo bomber he trained on. And almost crashed.

"We were shooting at drift buoys for target practice," Maples said. "I succeeded in firing too many rounds and heated up the barrel. The last round I fired cooked off and went through the vertical stabilizer. We went out of control.

"The pilot was shouting nasty things at me. He got it under control. We landed safely. My squadron never let me forget that I shot down my own airplane."

After the service, Maples and his wife started a company called Military Systems Group, outfitting U.S. defense forces with equipment and weapons. He started the museum as a way to display his growing collection. He retired, leaving the business to his children, and his wife died. More and more, the museum has become his passion.

He keeps a list of the things he wants to collect, and hires people to search for them at military shows. To make sure it's a safe place for children, Maples disabled all the guns, and got approval from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to own and show his collection.

Cockpit is popular

The most popular item, especially with Boy Scout troops who get to climb on board, is the entire two-seater cockpit from a B-24 Liberator bomber plane. Every button is intact.

"A farmer in Canada had bought it surplus," Maples said. "I had the fuselage too, but it took up the whole room. Plus, the farmer had been using it as a chicken coop. It really smelled."

The cockpit is the stuff of little boy fantasies — big boys, too.

"I found out that after a hard day and a few glasses of wine, I can get this up to 24,000 feet, without oxygen," Maples quipped. "It's been flown a lot."

He averages about three tours a week, with a dozen or so visitors at a time. Word spreads by mouth — he doesn't advertise. If you want to see it, call Pony Maples and leave a message.

Be patient. Mr. Maples might be downstairs, piloting a mission.

Pretty neat. He HAD the whole fuselage of the '24?

There is a fella near Chicago who built a P-61 and Me-109G fuselage in his basement, both with many authentic parts.
We all need a refuge in our caves!!
VL

What is the SN of the B-24 and what happened to the rest of it?!?

Pony Maples? Hey - I recognize that name! He's the fellow who found the Brewster Bermudas in Tennessee back in '73. I wonder if he got any pieces off them?

CBS) A couple hours outside of Los Angeles there's a huge airplane junkyard. It caters mostly to Hollywood, selling movie props -- but Anthony Toth shops there for a very different reason.

CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman reports Toth wants to own a 747. And for the last 20 years he's been buying it, one piece at a time.

Specifically, his dream has been to build a Pan Am 747. The airline has been out of business since 1991, but Toth's dream goes back even further.

As a kid, Toth was so fascinated by the plane his family took on vacation he would snap pictures of every one of its parts.

"I think I wanted to recreate the experience of flying at home," he said.

Later, as an adult, he started purchasing those parts, in hopes that someday he could recreate the actual plane, right down to the place settings.

Impossible you say? Welcome aboard.

If you didn't know better you'd think it was 1979 and you were on board a vintage Pan Am 747 clipper jet. But if you take away the airplane sounds, and open up the main cabin door, you'll see this isn't exactly an exact replica -- it's just as much of the plane as Toth could fit in his garage.

What Toth does have is the entire first class cabin and galley, which he uses for entertaining. And just about everything is vintage - except the custom package peanuts, which he buys new.

"Because there already is a 30 year old nut in the cabin," Hartman said.

"Well said," Toth agreed.

In total, he's put well over $50,000 into the project. And he's not done.

"I'm never satisfied with the cabin," Toth said. "I always want more."

Ironically, Toth works as a sales manager for United Airlines. He's not married (go figure). So there's really no one to reign him in.

Just be glad you're not a neighbor. And be gladder still, that Toth's family didn't vacation on cruise ships.