Thanks for asking, guys!
Old 37270 was quite the fearsome killer in her day... that is, to fire ants and other creepy crawly critters in the southern and western United States. Navy card shows her acceptance date of 29 Aug 1945. It's interesting to me that even though this was long after VJ Day that she was actually completed at Lockheed Burbank versus the fate of so many other aircraft on the production lines with varied manufacturers. We've all seen the horrible shots of half-completed airframes sent out to the scrapyards just after the surrender papers were signed. She rolled off the line as a "C" model and that's our restoration plan - five .50 cals in the nose, two in the Martin upper turret and two in the rear tail gun position.
Anyway, '270 sat around forever, it seems, and was finally accepted by USN on 27 November 1945. It appears for the next decade she flew all around the US from one Naval Air Facility to the next, probably as a medium weight multi engined aircraft for active duty and reserve pilots to maintain currency and draw a little flight pay. At each NAF, she received some sort of modification or repair work. At least one of the mods was evident when we pulled the wings - the old aluminum oil tanks had been replaced with rubber cells and some plumbing was re-routed.
She was retired from the Navy 09 May 1956 with 1206 hours TT. She'd been in storage at Litchfield Naval Air Facility, Goodyear, Arizona having flown in from Willow Grove, PA.
This airplane was one of 21 or 22 PVs purchased by Ralph Johnson at Litchfield. He told me a few years ago he'd stopped in to the area originally to purchase a few radial engines, and ended up bidding on a PV as it was a better deal to buy engines "still on the hoof" he told me versus the pulled and prepared powerplants sitting in neat little rows.
Ralph bought the first PV and was offered the rest of them for one lot price. He wasn't exactly sure what he paid for the first one, but thought it was no more than $1,800 - give or take. "It seemed like a pretty good deal to me at the time, and they were gonna scrap all of them in a little corner of the airfield," he said.
Eventually all of Ralph's PVs were ferried from Litchfield to PHX and then to Douglas, AZ, where his chief mechanic Jay Yotti, began removing all of the military stuff and devising a spray system for each airplane. Over the years, Ralph's airplanes, operating as RALCO based in Wyoming, applied fire retardant to forest fires and killed bugs all across the United States. This one was fitted with a dry bait system. A large hopper in the belly of the plane was filled with chopped corn cob pieces bathed with malthion. A pump system drove the dry bait thru a series of pipes and was dispensed through the wing tips. It was a truly ingenious affair.
Ralph sold off most of his fleet in the 1980s. Hirth Air Tankers was the last firm to operate some of his PVs - others having been sold to various operators. John and Connie Hirth allegedly came down to PHX and had planned to fly this one out, but robbed a few parts off of it to get another PV back to Wyoming.
Over the years '270 was attacked by vandals and parts mongers who took her instrumentation, radios and props. Sadly, the log books were thrown away long ago (some say they ended up in Wyoming by mistake, but I couldn't find them at Connie's place a few years ago). A souvenir hunter took her data plates as well. It became the property of International Air Response until I purchased it in 2005.
Maybe fellow WIX members can keep an eye out for any of her log books. It's a real long shot, but maybe somebody has them on a library shelf somewhere. I'm real curious as to her civil hours. It's not that impossible of a thought, as I know one former PV operator here in Mesa who still has about a half-dozen airframe, prop and engine log books that belonged to Harpoons that either crashed while in civil service or were scrapped for parts.
Maybe, just maybe, someone will find a trinket out there somewhere marked BuNo 37270....
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