Fairchild AT-21 Gunner - Survivor?

[Cvairwerks]

Rob: No engines, props or cowls. Some RB torched the forged mounts off rather than take out the 4 bolts to remove each engine. It's funny tho, as they took the time to undo all the QD's on fuel and oil lines.

I've got a few pics I shot after moving the nacelles to the house a while back. As soon as I can get set up with a photo account somewhere, I'll post them. The ones I had of the fuselage and all the other stuff have disappeared, so I will have to shoot some more when I can unbury things. If all goes well, I shoudl be getting into some decent shop space after the first of the year and will start making progress.

[L. Thompson]

Here are the civil registered AT-21's according to various sources. Also the AT-21's seen in surplus yards, schools, and at civilian airports unmarked.


Registration Serial Notes
1 NX25663 overall silver; later PARCEL AIR EXPRESS added fuselage
side.

2 NX33690 California. 1946 according to Mark Aldrich

3 NX63432 black; red(?) triangular "scallop" on cowl & nose
pin-stripes; nose glass & windows pained over
Vail Fied, Montebello, CA

4 N64468 42-48440 Clyde Sturgell Jr., Tuscola, IL Still on civil register. Last activity 1977.

5 N67xxx Spartan School of Aeronautics, Tulsa, OK

6 N68367 Larkin said, "was on a photo list by Brian Baker"


7 XA-FUI silver; registration very large black letters on fuselage
An "X" appears on upper right rudder; Photo "probably by Harry
Arnold in the San Diego area.

8 XB-XYZ Mark Aldrich has a negative. Larkin thought it to be AT-21-2-BL


42-11698 Ontario RFC; "498" on cowl; upperturrett still on


42-11715 overal silver; serial on tail fins; "406" on lower half left cowl

42-11725 "559" on cowl; tires sank in surplus yard dirt

42-11742 Northrop (?) back lot with XP-79.
Northrop School of Aeronautics, Hawthorne, CA assumed same.

42-48053 Roanoke, TX Craig Cantwell

42-48060 public airport; no military markings

42-48432 Vail Field Montebello, CA 18 May 1946. Left gear collapsed.

42-48439 seen and photographed at Wichita August 1946



555 on cowl; surplus yard photo on eBay. All silver. Left front qtr.
view.

Arlington School, Tillamook, OR in 1952 per Mr. Harry Pendus

[jdvoss]

Out of curiosity did the AT-21 ever reach operational status with the USAAF ?? If so I would like to know which USAAF base(s) they were assigned as I would like to update my fuselagecodes.com data base to reflect its usage.

Thanks,
JohnV

[Obergrafeter]

Craig........wasn't there an engine in the Southside of San Antonio when you came down here a century ago?

[Cvairwerks]

O: There might have been...jeez it's been what 24 or so years ago that I was down there chaising L-5 stuff. Outside of the T-28 stuff at Boerne and the random stuff in a yard down towards Poteet (I think) I just don't remember. I do know the yard we went to had a Guiberson that I was lusting over, but he didn't want to sell.

The problems with finding Rangers has been that when I have bucks available, people think they are valued close to a PT-6, and when the bucks are zero, they come out of the wood work for pocket change. One of these days things will mesh and I will score engines and spares for them.

JD: They did but not for long. In the case of my project, it was accepted by the AAF in May of 1944 and surplused in Jan of 1945. It spent it's entire life at Tinker and Ellington Fields. When it was sent to Ellington as a unit hack, the turret had already been removed and faired over. I have a book written by a lady that was an aircraft mechanic at Ellington during 1944/45 and she mentions the AT by serial number in her book. I have yet to find any pictures of mine anywhere during it's service time, but I keep looking.

[Obergrafeter]

[quote="Cvairwerks"]O: There might have been...jeez it's been what 24 or so years ago that I was down there chaising L-5 stuff. Outside of the T-28 stuff at Boerne and the random stuff in a yard down towards Poteet (I think) I just don't remember. I do know the yard we went to had a Guiberson that I was lusting over, but he didn't want to sell.
Ya Craig that was my hangar with the T-28 stuff. When we went to that junk yard south of SA I remember the Guiberson. A few years later he had it at the National Stinson Fly In at Stinson Field. He wanted to run it and didn't have any diesel, but I had 110 gallons out in my truck so we set it up, me holding a fuel tank and him cranking, I just wanted to hear it start. Wrong move, cause it did start right up after 60 years or so, only problem everything that had accumulated in it: dirt, oil, dead bugs, dead aliens and whatever came right out and all over me. It ran fine till we shut the fuel off. Wouldn't want to be in an airplane when it shut down though....kinda shook everything to heck and back.

[Forgotten Field]

L-5, did anybody say L-5?

So that is a Bellanca-built AT-21? If you know who Joe Denest is, he worked at the Bellanca factory at some point during the war. Ask him to give you his impression of Giuseppe Bellanca.

[Cvairwerks]

Yep...got a B model here in the driveway right now. Only problem holding up it's restoration is honked up paperwork. When someone attemped to steal the a/c out of Sheriff's storage after it was seized by a court order, the only stuff they got away with was the logs and the lift struts. The lein holder never completed the title transfer after the seizure and sale, so I need to get going on that. It's probably going to be a mess to get it accomplished. Not going to do any real work on it til the paper is straight.