Warbird Information Exchange

This is one of the better shots of P-38 44-26385 crashed in 1946. My father in law survived this wreck but got malaria in the hospital and was reported to have died in the hospital. To his mothers relief, he wrote her to say he was not, in fact, dead... just being court-marshalled for the accident -by a most grateful government - as soon as he was able to stand. A relative with "extraordinary" access to gov. records says he had a "colorful" career with the 18th fg, 12th fs. He told very few stories of flying P-38s and P-51s but he sure got me interested in warbirds again. I have just found some cool photos from the phillipines and flight school in AZ and CA. I will try to post some soon. Dave

Is this Lt Crossman's landing crash at Tacloben Airstrip?

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Don't touch my junk!!

Yes, Don Crossman was my father in law. Jack, you are like LIGHTNING.

I understand he lost 2 other planes in the same area over water, earlier. Maybe '44-45. Must have been P-38s, but I'm not sure.

He often talked of his fear of bailing out into water because he couldn't swim.

Dave

Aint so bad.

OK, stupid here...what was he doing in 1946? My Pop stayed after the war in India to ferry a lot of the fighters out from the former front. He was actually part of a group that investigated crashes after the war.

He found that there were many pilots killed after the war "rat racing" and screwing around now that they were somewhat relaxed.

One story he told me was that the "game" was: come in for the break, touch down, power up and loop to touch down at the same place on the runway". Obviously, it didn't work all the time. Shame to lose these guys after what they had endured. A lot like the Band of Brothers after the war ended and they were waiting for return to the US or off to the Pacific.

Sorry to wander, what did he do here?

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

When you said "Rat Racing", I think you might be close. The story I got -not from him- was that he was convinced the P-38 would go ...faster, higher, whatever, than the "red line" .

He was a "car guy" with an engineering mind. He could figure gear ratios in his head like he had a calculator in there. He often packed the family of 4 into his Porsche 356 for cross country trips. ouch.

I have been told he was employed to test certain aircraft after the war, but this accident was not part of any testing. From what I know, this plane developed problems when it was "pushed" either too fast or too high and he was very lucky to get it on the ground in a more or less horizontal attitude. I have the court marshal papers but have never opened the envelope. Never seemed to make any difference to him. He talked little of his other 2 "bailouts" except that they were over water, which he hated.

He flew for AMERICAN after the war and was grounded due to heart problems, which really hacked him off. I often wonder what I would do if I was 20 and had access to a P-38 and almost 3000 hp.

By this date there were very few flying P-38 left has most all had been grounded and scrapping was in process. The few still flying were most likely toys with no on going maintainence. The 18th FG had switched to P-51s and would shortly be flying P-47Ns.

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Don't touch my junk!!

I have a few shots of him with P-51s. There are a bunch of P-51D manuals and books in his "flight bag". There are some intersting Nose Art shots too. One of "Heady Hedy" (sp). Don't know where they were taken.
Here is a shot of the guns from the 46 crash.