Warbird Information Exchange

We are finishing up an SNJ-5C for a customer. The record card for the airplane shows that it was based with FASRON 11 at Atsugi, Japan throughout 1954. Does anybody have information on what carrier would have been homeported in that area during that time period? It would seem to me that the only reason to have -5C with the tailhook around would be if there was a carrier home ported close by.

The airplane was previously on the U.S.S. Roosevelt and Midway.

Nice. Does it have all the tailhook stuff? Will it be at Oshkosh for Judging or is it just going to be a customers great flying airplane(not stock)?
Why not post some pics ?
Thanks

Tim most CVs at that time had a SNJ assigned and was based ashore when in port. The Midway was in Japan around that time.

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Don't touch my junk!!

Yes, it has all the tailhook stuff. We have four airplanes that we purchased complete with all the tail hook pieces. We also just saw some more in a warehouse we were at. They don't appear to be as rare as I once thought.

This airplane is going to be nearly stock. Exceptions being radios and brakes, etc.

I don't know what the owner plans to do with the aircraft, I am sure he will take it to OSH, as he goes every year.

I will post some pics in the coming weeks.

I thought that might be the case, especially since it was on the Midway earlier in its career.

When we took it part we could see that it was yellow, but we are trying to nail down the exact markings.

Their were no carriers homeported in Japan at that time, but the Midway was a part of 7th Fleet and in and out of Japan in 54/55,don't know if the SNJ on the Midway are accurate but check these out.
http://www.midwaysaircraft.org/PhotoGal ... allery.htm
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=NAS.+ATSUGI+IM ... atsugi.htm

http://www.cv41.org/photos/gallery/main ... emId=13831

Here is a photo of a Midway SNJ-5C in 1953. This one looks silver (hard to tell), but the one we are working on went through overhaul at Pensacola right before it left for Atsuga, so that is probably where it got its yellow paint as SNJs would have been painted yellow by then.

FASRONs were also the location of 'pool' or spare aircraft and damaged aircraft that were beyond the capability of the ship/squadron to repair.

The overseas homeporting of carriers did not start until 1970. But a WESTPAC FASRON might hold an SNJ-5C to provide a replacement for a lost or damaged aircraft, or it might have been damaged and gotten offloaded from a carrier deployed to WESTPAC.

Here are some photos of the SNJ-5C before we started it. I will post some in progress shots soon. We are just getting ready to move the rebuilt tailcone to the paint booth. The cockpit area is just about done and we just hung the engine last week.

Tim, can you provide the history of where the project has been in the intervening years?

Sam Goldman of Chesapeake Airways bought it out of Pensacola in 1958 with about 400 others and stored it. From there I have no idea, I bought it from a gentleman in Casper that had four of them (we bought all four) and five standard airframes. I suspect it has been kicking around various owners in the meantime. Outside of its historical significance as a 5C it probably would not have been an excellent candidate for restoration in an earlier time. There was (and is) a lot of work to get this one back in the air, and it takes an owner who is really dedicated to having something special to make it happen.

What is the BuNo? Does it have an N number yet?

BuNo 51868 N703AW

Tim, nice pictures. Would there be any chance of you posting some pictures of the dataplate(s) and where you found them on the airframe?

I'm into that kind of thing..

Thanks
HL

Like a lot of the surplus SNJs I have seen (including my own personal flyer) the NAA plate was removed and the Pensacola Overhaul Plate which was installed beside it stayed. I am not sure whether the NAA plate was removed by the NARF or at some other time in its life (maybe as a souvenir?). That was the case with this one as well. It was pretty corroded when we got it but I will look to see if the guys took pictures of it before they cleaned it up and restored it. They took several hundred pictures of this airframe before they took it apart, but I haven't gone through them all.

The dataplates were mounted on the right hand interior side panel.