Warbird Information Exchange

As promised here are some pics from my recent visit to MAAM. The rest of their collection will follow shortly when I get my own scanner for christmas

















Not sure if this will be the nose art or what


And finally the original antennea from the crash site on display


Merry Christmas to all!

If they paint Elvira on the side of that airplane there won't be a instrument
on this planet able to measure how appauled I'll be!!

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Don't touch my junk!!

agreed

Remind me dors, will this plane fly, or be a static display? What it would be to see one of these birds in the air... There wouldn't be an instrument able to measure how happy i'd be at that...

-Dennis S.
Greeley, CO

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"We must bond together and fight as brothers or we will all die as fools."

Jack,

I couldn't agree MORE

Dennis,

Yes...this one is gonna fly !!! She is going to be the only one of her RARE breed to take to the skies once again.

Merry Christmas All...

Paul

From the December 2005 MAAM Newsletter.


" Work has continued on the mueseum's 1942 P-61B-1NO at a near feverish pace since the Spring when the two new nacelle spars arrived.

As of this newsletter the LH Nacelle (the second one) is complete, minus the skin on the leading edge, wiring and some plumbing. Work continues on the leading edge and the plumbing installation.

Both of the main landing gear and the nose gear have been installed as have the 4 cannons. A rare 33 inch SC nose tire has been located and purchased. The forward canopies and plexiglas windows are nearly completed. In May a complete P61 engine cowling assembly (Speed ring, removable cowl panels and cowl flaps) arrived. This gives the Museum two full sets of engine cowling.

Plans are being made to assemble the fuselage and the two nacelles most likely during the second quarter of 2006. The main P-61 will then reside in place of the Fairchild 24G in the main hangar while the Fairchild will move temporarily to a T hangar until the new hangars are complete."

while elvira or what ever her name is is most definetely a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10, she is not appropriate for the p-61, as she is to 80' s / 90's style like. please stick to ww 2 period nose art, it's only fitting for such a super rare bird.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I agree Tom, there should be ww2 period nose art on there!

COTS

Plenty of Vargas or Petty girls are well suited for the task of gracing a night fighter!

Fred Pierce, who was (is?) the webmaster of the MAAM website, sent me a heap of pics of the P-61 resto about 5 years ago. Great to see the progress, thank you! Will get goosebumps when she flies!

Cheers

Andy

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http://aircrewbookreview.blogspot.com/

To put all those thousands of hours into restoring her and then put Elvira on her nose... just wrong.

It does seem odd that there are some great restorations out there that don't take much of the actual history of the aircraft into account above and beyond the engineering.

I am sure that MAAM will not use that as the nose art. But if I recall correctly this plane crashed with only a few hours on it, so it more than likely never had nose art. I am wondering which plane they will do. Personally my favorite P-61 nose art was "midnight belle"

I would like to remind the FORUM that the MAAM volunteers give up their weekends, evenings,ect. To restore what is the best chance any of us will have to see a P-61 fly. The dedication to this project has been incredible.
We should be ashamed that the majority of the comments are about the NOSE ART piece hanging on the wall.Which may or may not go on the completed airplane. The paint job is the least of their current worries.

I think that we all are very happy and thankful to those MAAM volunteers that give of their time to restoring the P-61. I would definitely not want to lose sight of that. It's going to be a beautiful thing to see her fly again. Thank you to all those who have given their time to work on her.
I don't mean to be rude but, I am also thankful and very happy that we have this forum where we can discuss what we see fit. No hard feelings vanguard...

COTS

I think everyone realizes that this will be the restoration of the decade. But if they put a hokey paint job on it that would really suck!
Here's my choice.

P-61A 6th NFS Lt Dale Haberman-pilot & Lt Ray Mooney-RO 4 kills

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Don't touch my junk!!

Oh yeah, olive drab...I'm with you all the way, Jack (the girl's not too shabby either!).

Something tells me there'll be dissension in the ranks if the MAAM doesn't go black overall though. Then again, I'm sure I've been wrong more times than right!

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.