Warbird Information Exchange

Flying Tigers with John Wayne...WhatIsIt ?

At the end twin engine type

Very strange tail arrangement

Better not be French.............last time I said something about their wonderfull airplanes I got chewed out , so this jewel is on it's own. Wasn't there a Curtiss Condor in the begining of the film?

From Celluloid Wings by James H Farmer, it was a Capelis XC-12 (NX-12762)

http://sfahistory.org/CapelisXC12side.jpg

Per Aerofiles....Tom

Safety Airplane Corp, Oakland Airport and El Cerrito CA.
Capelis XC-12 [X12762] getting prepped for a motion picture; that's Mr Capelis holding a yardstick (for unknown reasons). Site is Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale CA (RKO via Paul Mantz coll)
Capelis XC-12 Revised cockpit and windows (Frank Rezich coll)
Capelis XC-12 Oakland Airport (William T Larkins)

XC-12 1933 = 12pClwM rg*; two 525hp Wright Cyclone; span: 55'0" length: 42'0" load: 3000# v: 220/190/65. Dr John E Younger; POP: 1 [X12762]. All-metal; triple biplane tail; *partly-retracting gear, which extended automatically when the throttle was closed. Funded by local Greek restaurateurs as a promotional aircraft, and constructed with help from University of California students. US patent #1,745,600 issued to Socrates H Capelis, of El Cerrito, in 1930 (a modified application for patent of the design with a half-span dorsal wing and two more engines appears in 1932). The main spar was bolted together, and much of the skin attached with P-K screws rather than rivets. These tended to vibrate loose, requiring tightening or replacing every few flights. Promotional tours were soon abandoned, and its career ended as a movie prop, appearing in ground roles* in several motion pictures ("Five Came Back" 1939, "Flying Tigers" 1942, others) before reportedly being scrapped c.1943. * Flying shots in films were of a model; the plane itself was grounded by the studio's insurance company.

You have Capelis XC-12 as scrapped c. 1943. I've seen this elsewhere, so I was surprised when I watched the Columbia 1950 release "On the Isle of Samoa" on TCM, which featured both the model and the full-scale ship. So it appears the old bird lasted longer than has been suggested! (— William Villan 4/7/07)

As ugly as it is it should be French!

It's a P.O.S.!
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Anyone know anything about the P-40 replicas?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Well I do know this; it for sure isn't a Termite!

I love that line

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Can't tell you much about the replicas except that they were horrible looking ) but much of the actual flying in real P40's was done by a friend of mine, Herb Fisher. There were two other pilots borrowed from Wright Pat test center to work on the picture as well. They were Dan Reid and Dick Griffin.
Herb was a charter member of the IFPF and a very good guy. He also did the high mach dive testing at Wright Pat in the Jug with just about every type of propeller shape you could imagine.
Dudley Henriques

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Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship

That is awesome. I would love to see some behind the scenes pics of them. They did look bad, but interesting. Looks like they had a small motor to turn the prop

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

We covered parts of this about a year ago, I said then that I'd read that the ARMY refused to loan any P-40's to REPUBLIC STUDIOS for some reason, so the REPUBLIC air force marched out to the wilds of Simi Valley and the P-faurties were canvas and steel framing using 6 cylinder Chevrolet engines to turn the props, this at a time when P-40's were rapidly going second line of defense status and they were all over Southern Californicate.

The Junkers G-1 used a biplane horizontal tail arrangement with pretty fair success (enough to fly and entire gold mine operation into Borneo with 3 of them), saw that again this morning on Wings of the Luftwaffe on History Channel the program about the JU-52.

And everyone knows what the best done, closest to the real truth aviation movie ever made was............



AIRPLANE

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Airplane


Impressive to say the least about the knowledge to be found here

From, the Bill Larkin collection on 1000aircraftphotos.com

Man....what an ungly duckling !!!!

Now here is another one. Why the reverse slanted glass on the cockpit ?

Others of the days did the same ( Boeing 247, Vultee & Stinson to name a few )

Better against reflection & glare ?

Some Ford Trimotors had the angled windshield also.
Jerry

_________________
"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

'Reversed' windscreens...

The prototype Lockheed 10 had a reverse angled windcreen at first, as did some Miles types. I think there was a fashion for them, briefly, and some argument for different water shedding and glare properties - how real as against 'we think it looks different / distinctive / nice' you takes your choice.


Think you mean the G-31 in New Guinea? (Yeah, I looked it up to check. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_G_31

The Junkers G-38 and the Handley Page HP 42 (among others) also had biplane tails and made it into W.W.II.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com