Grumman Duck survivors

[JBoyle]

A couple of questions about Ducks...

I saw a photo of the remain of the ex-USAF rescue bird recovered in Alaska. It looked pretty complete. I don't know when the photo was taken...where is it now and what kind of shape is it in?

Several years ago I heard of a Duck crashing/sinking in the Ohio River with fatal results. What happened to that plane?

Kermit Weeks has one of the ex-Tallman/Mantz "Murphy's War" Ducks and the other is in the USAF museum...any others out there? A friend (who does know a lot about warbirds) swears that one/two were wrecked in filming...I recall a period artice (Frank Tallman in Flying Magazine) that didn't mention any wrecks...who's correct?

[RareBear]

Was at the airport in Lake Wales, Florida, in about 1976-77 and saw the remains of a J2F-6 Duck, with Bob Diemert's name and phone number spray painted on the major pieces. Diemert was in Carman, Manitoba, at the time, and I had been to his place several times in 1973-74 and had seen the Zero and A-26 he had at the time. I was surprised to see his name on the Duck.

I was back in Lake Wales about 3 years later, and the Duck was gone, and no one seemed to know if Diemert had gotten it or it had been sold to someone else. When I first saw it in 1976 it had been there a while, since grass had grown up around it.

Walt

[Tulio]

One that did not make it:

This Grumman -bearing false Peruvian AF markings as FAP-164, was displayed at the Public Works Park (Parque de Obras Publicas) in Lima, Peru.

It was broken up and smelted some time in the 1970s.

Two other Ducks crashed, one in Puerto Inca and the other in the Urubamba River; people onboard survived and swam to the river shore. According to some versions, "there is nothing left" of these airplanes, while some people say that there might be something left -even 50 years after the crashes- but I do not have any additiona information on them, other than the three airplanes were operated by a missionary group. (JAAF??)

The photo shown, author unknown, was kindly provided by Mr. Mike Little of Omaha, NE.






Saludos,


Tulio

[Eric Rogers]

There was one that went into the Maumee River in Toledo OH on July 12, 1980. Not sure what happened to it after it was pulled out. There was a fatality involved. As I remember it was the passenger that was killed. Also i don't remember the exact details of it but the wheels were not retracted and a water landing was made, the plane flipped over and sank. the ntsb record doesn't have much info on it.

Eric

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=30727&key=0#

I think that that derelict ex-Diemert Duck eventually went to Kermit Weeks and is still in storage - one of his engineers was telling me about it some years ago. As for the "Murphy's War" Ducks, I believe that the two that were used in the filming were the one that is now with the EAA in their museum at Oshkosh, and the one now with the USAF Museum at Wright-Pat. No Ducks were destroyed in the filming (the one that gets blown up by the sub at the end of the movie is a mock-up) although Frank Tallman did have a small incident with one of them where he whacked a tree top or something during filming and suffered some wing damage that had to be repaired on location. The real Duck expert would be Kermit Weeks, I'm sure he probably knows the whole story about how the airplanes were used in the movie and what happened to them. Personally I never could figure out why they needed two machines to make the film -but what a SPECTACULAR film!

Great picture Tulio, but what a sad ending. I'd have given my left arm for that Duck - as was, where was.

The Duck - the perfect airplane - radial engined, fabric-covered biplane, amphibian, taildragger - and built by the great "Ironworks" itself. Doesn't get any better.

Dan

[Chad Veich]

Tom Friedkin has one at Chino, ex-Weeks airplane. (traded for the F3F I believe)

[marine air]

There were four flyable Ducks one year at Oshkosh, maybe around 1980.

1) The J2f-6 freshly restored by Grumman employees for the EAA
2) A white and yellow pre-war painted owned by John Seidel. I think this one went to Kermit Weeks.
3) Joe Barnum's three tone blue model which he later that year landed gear down in the water and did extensive damage.
4) Another white one which flew in from Chino.
5) Around this time frame , another one was retrieved from the Panama Canal Zone in terrible shape. Kermit cornered the market by buying up all of them except the CHino one. He later traded one of the above Ducks to the Air Force museum for a Seversky P-35. (They had two of those.) There seems to have been one at the US Naval Museum at the time and that was all that were around.

[bdk]

11 in the FAA registry:

http://162.58.35.241/acdatabase/acftinqSQL.asp?striptxt=j2f&mfrtxt=grumman&modeltxt=j2f&cmndfind.x=8&cmndfind.y=16

[HELLDIVERS]

HI THE ALASKA DUCK IS STILL IN ALASKA LOCATED AT THE ALASKA HISTORICAL AVIATION MUSEUM IN ANCHORAGE RESTORED IN ITS ORIGINAL COLORS I BELIEVE ITS ON LOAN THANKS MIKE

[Chris Brame]

The "Canal Zone" bird sounds like BuNo 33614, the former N55S, now N5855S, which Bob Diemert tried to recover from Colombia (not Panama). It showed up in Air Classics' "Warbird Report" a couple times around '74-'75 in "pretty ratty condition", per the caption.

Warbirds Worldwide also has an ex-Mexican Navy J2F-6 listed with the Museo de la Fuerza Aerea Mexicana at Santa Lucia as of '78; is it still there?

I also recall that one of the flying Ducks has a cut-down AT-6 canopy... which one?

[John Lane]

Chuch Greenhill is finishing up on his project in Wisconsin!

[tom d. friedman]

usaf museum has 1

[JohnH]

The "Canal Zone" bird sounds like BuNo 33614, the former N55S, now N5855S, which Bob Diemert tried to recover from Colombia (not Panama).

Thanks for spelling Colombia the right way.

John

[Mike]

Kermit's at Sun 'n Fun 2 weeks ago.....

[Chris Brame]

Well, like I said, I've been a proofreader for a long time. And my Colombian friend who's into pre-Columbian art would notice if I mixed them up .