Warbird Information Exchange

Here's a wide shot of 4 of the 6 PBYs at Moses Lake Airport, WA. I have closer shots of each of these birds if anyone is interested...

Whats the deal with these? Haven't heard anything about them before.

_________________
When all is said and done more is said than done.

I want the one with the blisters.

I want the one with the blisters.

well you've got a 50% chance.

They were some of the PBYs owned by Bob Schlaefli, who used some of them as fire bombers during the 1980s. There were about three of them that were active, and another 2 or 3 which just sat there on the ramp at Moses Lake, Washington, presumably as spares or candidates for mod into air attackers.

He also owned a mountain of spare PBY parts, as well as the B-25 carcass you see in the other thread I started and many B-25 parts.

Back in 1999 there was supposed to be a huge fire-sale of all of the SLACFO airplanes and parts, but it was famously stopped right after it started (for who knows what reason). I'd heard that it was because Schlaefli's reserve prices were way too high and nobody was bidding, but that's rumor only because I wasn't there. I also heard that the owner was withdrawing items from bid as the auction was under-way, and all sorts of other weirdness.

Sometime between 2000 and 2002 there was another auction or sale, and some of the stuff was sold off. Two or three of the PBYs went to outfits that were going to restore and fly them. As someone pointed out, one of the PBY hulks was bought by a place in New Zealand as a spare for their flyable PBY...not sure what happened to all the rest of the stuff.

Anyway, I visited the place back in 1991 and took a bunch of photos. In another thread, I posted the Google Earth look at the ramp where I took the photos, which shows the green PBY that wasn't in the photos I took.

Bob believed those items that were sold (at the first auction) were worth more than he was receiving, and the bidding that transpired was too low. Hence, he closed it down. Much to the chagrin of the participants. Later on, and closer to his death, he authorized his step son to unload it all for whatever they could get.

That white twin engined plane...is it the B-23?