Hello my fellow Warbirds lovers!
Following my posting is a copy of the on-line article from this mornings (Sunday, 9/9/07) Connecticut Post Newspaper (and a link to the site).
WE NEED SOME HELP!
There is a ground swell that is coming to a head tomorrow, Sept. 10, at 11:00am. A rally is planned to start the battle to save the FG-1D Corsair that has languished on outside display since 1971.
Many of you know that the condition of the aircraft is very poor, almost critical. It’s been outside in the salt air environment since it was installed on the pylon. It was re-painted several times over the years, but never removed from its pylon and corrosion checked. Severe exfoliation of the spar is jeopardizing the aircraft’s future. Paint alone does not hold an aircraft together. The Marine Corps League claims ownership, which no one contests, but they do not have the money to even start the process to save the aircraft. All the funds for any restoration would need to be raised from dollar #1.
In Connecticut, everyone who wants to help, wants the aircraft to stay IN CONNECTICUT! Preferably on the airport, and perhaps, as a last resort, back on its pedestal. Many people may not be interested in donating funds to help save the Corsair if it’s just going to be put back in the same location with no other protection from the elements but the paint on its skin. Options have been proposed, such as a dome over the pylon, a separate building housing the aircraft with a small Marine Corps display included, and the replacement of the Corsair with a fiberglass replica.
The Marine Corps League is concerned about losing control of the aircraft. This is a justified concern and one that should be calmed. They should be the LEAD in this effort. Nobody wants to take the Corsair from their control, but for years they have stonewalled and stopped every attempt, good or bad. They have let the aircraft slip further into decay without EVER reaching out for help to preserve the aircraft as a memorial. They should retain ownership, but they should welcome and coordinate what the rest of the state and country want to do, save the aircraft from destruction!
In 2005, Corsair was named the “Official Aircraft of the State of Connecticut”, honoring those who built the State into the Arsenal of Democracy, and those who flew it into combat.
This Corsair is a Memorial to the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps League insists it is to remain so and must be replaced on the pylon if, and when, it is restored.
It’s current condition is a disgrace to the memories of those it represents to honor.
It is the ONLY Corsair on display in this type of outside environment in the entire United States!
Help bring this graceful bent-winged bird back to its proper place of honor and glory.
If you are so inclined, please, in your own words, write letters to the editor of the paper, news stations and other newspapers. The Marine Corps League and the Corsair need your help.
Time is running out and together, with the Marine Corps League in the lead, we need to save this historic Corsair and keep it in the State of Connecticut!
Blue skies,
Jerry O’Neill
Link to the Connecticut Post Article:
http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_6844453
Article from the On-Line CT Post
Battle shaping up over Corsair
FRANK JULIANO
fjuliano@ctpost.com
Connecticut Post OnlineArticle Last Updated:09/09/2007 05:00:41 AM EDTSTRATFORD — More than 60 years after it helped win World War II in the Pacific, the Corsair at the entrance to Sikorsky Memorial Airport is in the middle of another dogfight. Volunteers from the Connecticut Air and Space Center will hold a rally Monday at 11 a.m. at the monument to stress the need to restore the vintage aircraft — manufactured across the street in what was the Chance-Vought Corp. — and now infested with birds and their droppings. But the Greater Bridgeport Marine Corps League, which owns the plane, will go to court, if necessary, to block the restoration without proper assurances that the Corsair will be returned to its pedestal when the work is done, officers said.
"We just want assurances that this is not a ploy, not just a cheap way to get a Corsair,'' Thomas L. Kanesky Jr., past commandant of the Marine Corps League, said Saturday night. "Our biggest concern is that they'll take the plane off the pedestal and then say 'we don't have the money to do the work right now.' We don't want it stuck in a building somewhere where the public can't see it.''
Morgan Kaolian, a member of the Connecticut Air and Space Center and the former Sikorsky Airport manager, said that the center's volunteers — many of them U.S. Marine Corps pilots who flew the plane in World War II — are ready and willing to do the restoration work, with donated materials. "If you had to pay for it, the labor alone could cost $2 million,'' he said. "You have to retool and make parts that aren't being made anymore. The Marine Corps League doesn't have the money or the wherewithal to get the job done. We do.''
Bridgeport Mayor John Fabrizi, who serves as chairman of the Sikorsky Airport Commission, met with representatives of both sides in the dispute earlier this summer.
"We never came to a final agreement,'' Fabrizi said Saturday night. "I will contact the parties this week and broker a deal that will get the plane restored and back onto its pedestal.''
The U.S. Marine Corps League would be willing to consider a bond, posted to insure that the vintage craft will be returned, said Kanesky, an attorney and the past commandant.
There are two things that Kanesky and Kaolian agree on: the Corsair is in bad shape, and it is a vital piece of United States and Connecticut history. The Corsair, developed late in the war to battle the Japanese Zero was an innovative plane with a foldable "gull'' wing, a large propeller and a powerful engine. It was the first U.S. Navy plane to exceed 400 mph in level flight and it had the first retractable landing gear.
Launched from aircraft carriers, the Corsair saw action in the epic Battle of Midway and in the Russell Islands, Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal. "The Japanese called it 'Whistling Death' for the sound it made; it had a kill ratio of 20-to-1 over the Zero,'' Kaolian said.
But even more important locally was the plane's key role in making Connecticut the "Arsenal of Democracy'' in World War II and ever since, he said.
"They could turn out one of those every 83 minutes, Rosie the Riveter and the women in the (Chance-Vought) plant,'' Kaolian said. "The traffic would stop on Main Street so the plane could be brought across to the airport and tested, then it went right off to battle.''
Kanesky said that is exactly his point — that the Corsair needs to be out where people can see it and appreciate the history it represents. "If it comes off that pedestal we'd like to see it moved to the USS Intrepid, the carrier it was flown off of, which is in New York Harbor,'' the retired Marine said. "There, thousands of people would see it, instead of just a few driving by.''
The Intrepid, currently undergoing an $8 million restoration on Staten Island, will return to its home pier in Manhattan in 2008.
Kaolian, Jack Kelly and Nick Mainiero first had the idea to find a Corsair for the Sikorsky airport in the early 1960s, and enlisted then-Gov. Abraham Ribicoff and U.S. Sen. Thomas J. Dodd to help.
It took more than eight years to locate one, in El Salvador, where it had been sold to that country's military for $1 as surplus.
Kaolian acknowledges that ownership of the Corsair was given to the U.S. Marine Corps League, in exchange for the group's promise to maintain it.
"But it's been up there 35 years and they've done nothing.,'' the veteran pilot said. Not true, countered Kanesky said. "It was last painted four years ago and every year we clean it out once a year.
"We're not saying it doesn't need to be restored; we just want to know that we'll get it back,'' he said.
PHOTO LINK TO CORSAIR IMAGES
Here's a link to my flicker site with photos of the Corsair taken in April of 2007 and three of Peter Guyton's photos taken this last Saturday.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11465521@N ... 956720231/
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