Jiggersfromsphilly wrote:
From what I recall, the plane was somewhere in the vicinity of 80 to 85 % complete when the Navy showed up and just took it from Johnsville citing their ownership rights. It was not a polite situation at the time and it appears from the website that some revisionist work has gone on since many of the men who worked on her have passed on.
The museum's example of the SB2A Buccaneer is actually an Army Air Forces version of the aircraft, which designated the A-34, that was delivered during World War II and operated from William Northern Field near Tullahoma, Tennessee. Either after a mishap or because of the fact that the A-34 was not the most popular or capable of trainers, the aircraft was at some point in its service pushed off the runway at that airfield into a nearby swamp. There, during the mid-1970s, collector Dave Talluchet found it and another A-34, bullet holes visible in the metal not the result of combat as is normally the case on aircraft wrecks, but rather from the rifles of hunters, who after the war found the swamp to be a fruitful spot for game.
The next stop for the aircraft was Naval Air Development Center (NADC) Warminster, Pennsylvania, which in part occupied the former buildings of the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation where they were built. In an agreement with the collector, about sixty former Brewster employees, some of whom continued to work at NADC Warminster, undertook restoration of one of the Buccaneers, beginning their work in 1978. Nearly two decades later, their ranks had dwindled to a handful, and with NADC Warminster a casualty of the Base Realignment and Closure Committee, the volunteers were in jeopardy of losing the countless hours they invested in the Brewster. It was still owned by the collector and he was preparing to remove it.
At the request of the volunteer group and with the concurrence of the collector, the museum agreed to bring the assorted components of the aircraft to Pensacola and start the long and involved process to acquire Navy ownership of the bird. In 2004, the Bermuda became museum property and restoration work began again in earnest. Thanks to the dedication of the volunteers and employees assigned to the project and to a generous contribution of a Foundation supporter, Mr. John Schumann of Vero Beach, Florida., where a significant number of Buccaneers operated as advanced trainers during World War II, the complex restoration was completed in 2007 and the aircraft was placed on indoor static display.
It involved DT who managed to sell a P-51 that he didn't own from right out under neath of us. So I wouldn't be shocked that the NMNA took it back.
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