Warbird Information Exchange

saw these at the palm Springs Air Museum, forgot to ask what they were from; any ideas?





greg v

looks like a grumman unless its missing the wingtips

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Gregory, "Pappy" Boyington is the best drunk to controll a supercharged R2800 ever!

Part of me wants to say it's off a P-2 Neptune...another part of me wants a cold beer.

Grumman Goose. retractable floats.

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So that's where the wings for my Yale ended up!

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TBM?

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Not Neptune or Avenger wings. PBY outer panels maybe..

You can see the open bay where the float support retracts into.

The pony goes to Seafury1! I just called the museum and spoke with Matt in the maintenance department. The wings are in the B-17 hangar and are off of a Goose.

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Mike

thanks!

great museum btw, I went through a B-17 for my first time, very cool.

cheers

greg v.

Zach and Seafury1 are correct; they're the metalized* outer wing panels from a Goose (the center section of the wing was an integral carry-through structure that included the engine nacelles - the joint for the outer wing panels was just outboard of the engines), but I'm not as sure about bdk's comment.

(*Originally, the Goose outer wing panels were covered with fabric from the back of the spar box to the trailing edge. There were several different STC's to "metalize" them and replace the fabric with either .020 or .025 aluminum skin.)

The long open strips through the middle of the bottom wing skins are the original access panels that open up for maintenance, inspections, etc. The wingtips do look like the "squared off" tips that are part of the retractable floats modification, but the "open bay where the float support (i.e. strut) retracts" is NOT the same as a McKinnon retract float installation. It looks wider like the "other brand" of Goose retractable floats - the Pan Air design that is similar to a PBY's.

Another clue that they're not from a McKinnon-modified Goose: the original retractable landing lights are still installed in the bottom of the wing. Usually, if Gooses got McKinnon's retract floats, they also got his leading edge landing light mod.

The Goose (s/n 1161 N95467) that is intact (in other words - not missing it's outer wing panels) and on display at PSAM also once had retractable floats, but in the only photo I've seen of it with them (taken in Arlington, WA in 1985), they were up and I couldn't tell if they were McKinnon's or Pan Air's. The museum half-restored it to have fixed floats - they're the wrong fixed floats (not from a Goose) and they didn't restore the original round wingtips (they left the extended tips for the retract floats in place.) They re-installed two-blade Ham-Std props in place of the 3-blade Hartzells, but it also still has McKinnon over-size "picture windows" and windows added to the aft baggage area that weren't original. Finally of course, it has a faux USN paint scheme when it was originally built as a JRF-6B for service with the British (not the USN.)

Granted, my own experience working on Gooses aside, it IS easier to criticize than to DO!

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