Warbird Information Exchange

Here's one for you meatball historians.
This rainy afternoon while waiting for my slothlike web server to load up, I sat staring at the 'Green 78' CAF Val on the [i]Ghosts [/i]calendar. The trivial thought came to me....How many real Vals have survived??? Probably can count them on one hand, huh?
OOdvar Hajji probably has one. The Nimitz Museum of the Pac. War in Fredericksburg, Tx. has a wreck that was blown in half by its own bomb when it crashed-the only one I know of for sure.
Any others?

Doug Ratchford 'Canso42'

the planes of fame museum has a val that they are restoring to fly.
paul

Canso--

You should check out the "Preserved Axis Aircraft" website. It's a really impressive listing with tons of information and photos. You should be able to find the answer to this and many other questions. I see that the Nimitz and POF Vals are both on there -- with a couple of pics as well.

http://www.preservedaxisaircraft.com/

I am sure there are plenty of wrecks out there of Vals.

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Canso--

The Aichi D3A2 "Val" now at Planes Of Fame has an interesting postwar history...having at one point been on the airshow circuit up here in Canada! It was one of a batch of Japanese machines (otherwise mainly comprising several A6M Zeros) recovered by the celebrated collector Bob Diemert of Carman, Manitoba (rummage around WIX for threads about a movie called "The Defender" and you'll read plenty more about Bob). Around 1970 two of the recovered airframes were made flyable--the D3A and one of the A6M2s--powered by Wright R2600 QECs off Mitchells. The Zero later passed to the Marine museum at Quantico (still with the R2600) and is now at Pensacola (with another engine of more standard size). The "Val", registered CF-TZT, attended Canadian airshows briefly before joining the then National Aviation Museum (now CAvM). NAM swapped it to POF for (iirc) a Sikorsky R-4 helicopter airframe. It's what might be called a "creative" rebuild, with the Mitchell engine on the nose and a modified Harvard fin and rudder on the other end...but it's the only visually-complete Val on display anywhere. Would be cool to see it in the air, in company, say, with a Stuka...

S.

I've seen the val up close years ago.There was so much that diemert did to this airframe that was way substandard, repairs to include angle iron as an insertion repair on lower right wing spar cap. This was attached with stove bolts.Ask the guys at POF about it.They can confirm. They have spent years rectifying these issues.You put a big enough powerplant on it and a barn door will fly too applies here.

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Hang The Expense

Yup, the CAF finally gave up trying to unDiemertize theirs and sent it to Hawaii!!! Just say the name Diemert and insiders know about this stuff. It sometimes blows your mind that guys like this are still alive.

Hey, Lets dont forget about the "p-40" with the merlin on it, t-6 tail and 8 piece leading edge with douglas extusions.

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Hang The Expense

Yes Hang, ya gotta love our Defending Hero's pop rivets too.

JH

Holy cow! This guy sounds worthy of a website!

what about the 4 seat mustang with the cf100 canopy
paul

...yep, and the ex-Aussie Firefly AS.6, CF-CBH, flown under the power of a Merlin 500 off a crashed Arctic supply Avro York (another of those Merlins made its way onto the firewall of that fascinating composite "P-40" previously mentioned). The aft tactical compartment of the Firefly, denuded of the usual ASW equipment, made a handy location for six sideways seats on benches...surely the only Firefly troop transport!

And for sheer variety...a quite stock Hurricane XII, CF-SMI, that went to the UK for the filming of "Battle Of Britain", passed to Scottish collector Sir William Roberts (Strathallan), thence to CWH...where it tragically ended its days in the Hangar #3 fire in February 1993. Ironically, nearly all the "whimsical" rebuilds Bob Diemert did still exist in one form or another (albeit the P-40, after an awful lot of work, is now a standard Kittyhawk), while his most authentic restoration no longer exists. As to the others...we owe Mr D a tip of the hat for recovering/rescuing many of them; it's quite possible that none would remain today without his involvement.

S.