The F6F at Pima was brought up from the waters off of San Diego. It was on a check out flight when the engine quit and it was ditched. When she was brought up her paint was as fresh as the day she went in. So was the rest of the structure except for the magnesium parts. As I recall the star and bar had the red border around it.
Several components were removed, inspected and tested for the effects of long term underwater exposure. As mentioned, one of the guns was cleaned and fired. The airframe then went to Pima.
One day Bob Johnson, Director of Restoration at Pima, was having lunch in his office which was near the door of the WWII barracks building pictured behind the F6F. He heard and felt a big “karumph” and looked out of the window only to see the dust cloud surrounding the engine that had just fallen off of the Hellcat. Your photo shows just where it ended up after it fell off. Good thing no one had gone up to it and pulled on the engine only to find a crusty R-2800 sitting on their toes!
The WB-50 that was at Pima is indeed the one now at Castle. I wrote a story in a post a few years ago about putting electrical power to her while she was still at Pima. It must have been around 1979 or so. Here is a copy of the post:
Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:05 am Post subject:
_______________________________________
...Castle also has a WB-50 that was flown out of the Pima Air Museum in Tucson. That aircraft was complete sans the 8 day clocks.
When I worked at Pima, as a kid during the summers of high school, I would often spend the night at the museum with Fred Lindig who was on the restoration staff and doubled as the night watchman. Fred and I would use the batteries of a golf cart and would power up several of the aircraft that were complete enough electrically to do so. The WB-50 was one of the aircraft that we powered up. Fred was in the back getting the radios working (the BC-348 liaison receiver and interphone) we were talking over the interphone as I was sitting up front in the flight engineers seat. I was listening to a foreign broadcast on the headset as I was turning over each 4360, one at a time with the starter motors. I was a 16 year old kid in the ultimate candy factory. I was amazed that every system that we fired up in that WB-50 worked beautifully. I remember wishing we could get one of the 4360's running so I could check it out on the Bendix ignition analyzer at the flight engineers panel.
Pima had two B-50's; a KB-50 which was stripped and gutted and the WB-50 which was, as described; beautiful. I recall being sad that Bob Johnson, Director of Restoration, had let Chief Master Sergeant Russell Morrison have the WB instead of the KB. I thought Pima should have kept the one that was in better shape. Oh well... I also recall hearing that the "crack restoration crew" from Castle took two weeks to get her ready for the flight. My reaction was: it took them two whole weeks to air up the tires and pre oil the engines!
Two years ago my employees and I flew the RC-45J to Castle for their open cockpit day. The WB-50 was opened up and I was talking to her crew chief. I asked why the bomb bay doors weren't opened for the public to look inside. He said that the doors had never been opened before so I offered to open them for him. They wouldn't open by the normal method of pulling the T handle in the front of the bomb bay. I found that they had been wired shut for the ferry flight with bailing wire which was easily removed and the doors soon popped open. The doors wouldn't open all the way due to corrosion in the lower longerons. I was saddened to see how much she had gone down hill since leaving Pima. She was looking real rough and the last 20 years at Castle have been pretty hard on her. Poor old girl!
The Chief sure did put together an awesome collection of aircraft. A lot of those aircraft flew in under their own power. I don’t think that he ever really got the credit that he deserved for building that museum into one of the best ones around.
_________________
Taigh Ramey
Vintage Aircraft, Stockton, California
www.twinbeech.com
KEEP ‘EM FLYING…FOR HISTORY!
Here is a link to the page:
http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10162&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
Here is a link to the original thread:
http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10162&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
The good old days!
_________________
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Thank you!
Taigh Ramey
Vintage Aircraft, Stockton, California
http://www.twinbeech.com'KEEP ‘EM FLYING…FOR HISTORY!'
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I just caught the scene again this afternoon (USA channel). Kinda spooky in hindsight knowing the R-2800 was hanging by a thread at the time!
