PV-2D Harpoon 84062 (Tanker 101) comes back to life

[Fouga23]

Thanks for the update. How did the Swiss trip go, Taigh? I assume all went well? It was a pleasure meeting you

[Taigh Ramey]

A quick update on some recent projects that have been making progress. First is the nose guns. The guns themselves have been pretty much finished up and are working great thanks to Jon. Now it's time to direct our efforts to getting them mounted up. Some of the structure is still in the nose but a lot will have to be fabricated.

Here is Jon pulling the 8 gun lower nose off of the harpoon so we can start fitting the guns.




One important part is the front mount which was set up to secure an Edgewater adapter. The Edgewater adapter is one of two methods used to handle the recoil of the 50 cal on many WWII aircraft gun installations. It has internal springs that absorb the energy of the gun as it is being fired. The adapter screws on to the front trunion of the gun and had two bosses for mounting bolts or lugs to the airframe. The Harpoon has a special casting that the Edgewater fits into with a quick release cam type of mount. We had the front castings made as per the drawings along with the special studs and cam locks. Here is a shot of the parts all ready for assembly with the Edgewater adapter being the grey cylindrical thing on the right:



Incidentally should you need replica Edgewater adapters let us know as we are tooled up to make them out of steel or a lighter aluminum. The one that we made in the photos are steel and are Parkerized just like the originals.

Here are the Edgewaters set up on one of our new guns in their front mounts.






The gold cad bolt is what secures the assembly into the Harpoons nose and we are lucky enough to have the front structure still present in our 8 gun nose so these will bolt right in once we make the special bolts.

The bigger project will be the rear mountings as a lot of the structure has been drilled off and will have to be fabricated.

Slowly getting the parts together to mount up all 8 guns. I am giddy at the thought of how this is going to look with a tight V formation of 8 browning 50's. Even giddier at the thought of firing all 8 of these guns together. we expect to have the guns mounted up before air show season 2018.

[Taigh Ramey]

The next project involved more work on our cool Mk 13 torpedo. We did a lot of conservation work to stop any further rust and corrosion. We cleaned and prepped the torpedo and painted it. We even had a Warbird museum meeting that featured the Mk 13. I put together a presentation on its development, systems and operation complete with a demonstration of the motor all powered up for the crowd. It was a lot of fun and the thopedo looked great.

Here are some progress photos:



This is the inside of the warhead which was also in good shape. We are lucky to have an actual warhead instead of a training head although I'd like one of those too!



Here is Tim stripping the paint





The well for the exploder mechanism. Anyone happen to know where we can find a Mark 8 contact exploder?



Paint going on. We are just preserving it with primer at this point. It looks like the original finish was bare metal on the air flask and afterbody. Still trying toi find detailed finish specs









Making and fitting the saddles for the torpedo to fit in the bomb bay of the Harpoon.





I have misplaced the photos of the torpedo presentation. I'll keep looking.

[mike furline]

Nice update! Thx.

And what do eight .50's do for your weight and balance? Do you currently fly with ballast up there? What will the completed gun bay installation weigh?

[Taigh Ramey]

Hello Mike,

With 8 steel replica 50's, ammo boxes. feed chutes, hardware etc. I'm estimating that it will add about 520 pounds and moves our CG forward three inches which is a good thing. We were relatively aft CG at 195.54 and a BEW of 18,751 pounds. The addition of guns brings us to 19,271 pounds with a CG of 192.15. The CG range is 184.5 to 197.9 so we are good. Even with full fuel we are still good on CG and are under 26,000 pounds takeoff weight. Mag gross weight is 33,000.

Here is the weight and balance according to the load adjuster:





The new index is 45 so we are good for the basic empty weight CG


Loaded with full air show fuel and oil (like we could afford to top her off!)





Armor plate up front and the APS-3 radar antenna in the nose will also help.

[C VEICH]

Fantastic stuff Taigh. I get excited every time I come to WIX and notice an update to this thread. Looking forward to the next one!

[Michel Lemieux]

Taigh....your dedication to all of the following:
- Authenticity
- Airworthiness
- Honoring the veterans
- Keeping this alive with real passion

You guys rank as the best in the field.

Michel

[Taigh Ramey]

Had a fun thing happen recently. I was flying with the Collings Foundation training in the B-24 and we stopped in Goodyear Airport or as it will always be known to me as Litchfield Park. Litchfield was the US Navy's aircraft storage yard and is where 062 and our 'new' PV-2 37524 were stored from 1945 until 1958 and 1952 respectively.

Here is a shot of 84060 in storage at Litchfield. 062 must have been nearby.



I asked Rick Turner about photos of the Harpoons in storage there and he emailed some to me. Thanks Rick!!

He said that the 5 dark rows of aircraft toward the bottom were PV-2's.



The two large hangars in the photo are still there and it was pretty straight forward to figure out where the PV yard was. A kind gentleman from the Airport Authority allowed me to walk over there.

Here is a closer shot showing the row of PV-2's. I walked to the area that I thought was close and took some photos. Not quite the right perspective but I think I found the correct mountain range.


Looking around I could see bits and pieces of the tie downs and some aircraft parts too.

Here is a magneto or induction vibrator lead



A stainless steel hose clamp that I will clean up and put on the harpoon so it can fly again





A desiccant plug that was used to keep moisture out of engines that are preserved.



None of the above could be directly tied to the PV-2 but this next one was. I was giddy to find it.



This is a part of the control box for the APA-16 set. This was used to input the bomb type, speed and altitude information for dropping bombs through the APS-3 radar.





This is from the control box at the radar station on the lower left in the photo











This set was used in other aircraft as well but since it was in the area where the Harpoons were stored, I am going with it's from a HARPOOOON!

[peter]

what an amazing find after all this time Taigh!

[K5DH]

Cool stuff as usual, Taigh!

I'll bet you could uncover some great artifacts there using a metal detector!

[Zac Yates]

How cool is that?!

[PJ]

Very cool!! I would wager to say that "Hot Stuff" (37396) is among those Harpoons, since she was stored at Litchfield.


PJ
PV-2 Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

[Taigh Ramey]

The gun nose project has been coming together slowly. We have been making lots of parts as time and funding permits but we are now starting to bring all of those parts very close together.

Part of the problem has been the lack of information on the 8 gun nose. There are a few drawings in the blueprints but they are far from complete. Maybe we just don't have the latest set of drawings or maybe they just never finished it since the whole project was shut down abruptly at the end of the war. Who knows.

One of the issues for the gun nose has been the mounts for the guns. This is basically what we had to start with:



We were lucky enough to have the basic prints for the front mount and we replicated them right to the drawing. It was modeled in 3D then machined and it turned out great. We did this with lots of parts and were able to replicate the mountings pretty accurately.

Here is the 3D cad drawing in SolidWorks:



And the part assembled on the replica gun with four other parts also made by 3D/CNC . This constitutes the quick release mount that allowed the gun to swivel in azimuth and elevation to harmonize the guns.



Next was the rear structure for mounting the guns as most of it was removed long ago when she was converted to an air tanker. The rear mount structure was quite elusive as we had no images besides the one above from the illustrated parts manual. Since the D model Harpoon is also a bit rare. Only 35 were made, and the few survivors seem to have had the same parts removed. Thankfully the prototype D model still exists and so does a lot of its rear gun structure. The first D model is BuNo 37535 which is in the Erickson collection in Madras, Oregon painted with the nose art of Russell's Raiders. Jim Martinelli was kind enough to open up the nose and he took many great photos for us. THANK YOU Jim! We really appreciate it.

From the photos I was able to figure out what parts to make and how to replicate what was originally in our nose. I started by removing the lower nose for cleaning and prep.

There were panels riveted in place where the spent casing and links would eject from the bottom of the nose when the guns were fired. I drilled these panels off which revealed some of the original non specular sea blue paint from 1945. It kind of matches our paint.




Now it was time to give it a good initial cleaning. The steam cleaner removed a lot of stuff that had been hiding in the hard to reach places. Some of it looked like the Arizona soil from its days at Litchfield from 1945 to 1958.



The cleaning took off some of the top layers of paint and revealed inspectors stamps and grease pencil notations from the factory.







The next job was to fabricate the webs in between the stepped bulkheads and then added the channels for the aft gun mounts.



Now the fun part. bring all of the parts together to see how the guns fit.







Four of the eight guns in place and they look pretty good. I can't wait to see all eight in place, with ammo boxes and feed chutes and chargers and...

One amazingly cool find was the stainless steel ejection chutes that mount under the guns. A long time ago I was at Aero Trader and came across one. I wasn't sure if it was even the correct part because I had never actually seen one but it looked like it might work. I bought it on a hunch and it turned out that it was indeed the ejection chute for the left bank of guns. How cool as it has got to be one of the rarest parts to find, well all of this D model nose stuff is hard to find but this was certainly one of the bigger ones. Funny how you can get all giddy over a stupid piece of sheet metal but I flet like Snoopy doing that dance he does.

Now I had a part to try and replicate the mirror image to make a matching set. Making this was doable but since it was spot welded it would be a pain to do properly and certainly take a lot of time.

A short while ago I saw an ad for harpoon parts and in the lot was...guess what? The right side ejection chute! What are the odds? It could just as easily have been the same side. I couldn't believe the luck.

Here is a photo of the two chute assemblies. They will need a lot of straightening and fitting but they play a large part to make the nose more complete. Awesome!



Next will be to finish fitting all of the gun mount structure, fitting the ejection chutes, cleaning and painting the nose and new parts and then final assembly. We still have to make the ammo boxes but I have been holding out to try and find them. Pushing my luck? Oh, hell yes, but stranger things have happened.

More to come, slow but sure.

[phil65]

Nice work and great finds...

Phil

[avenger2504]

Wow great find on the gun chutes. It never ceases to amaze me how sometimes life lines up to give you what you are looking for. I had ordered a cooling chute for my aeroplanes Gipsy Major engine however when it turned up it didn't seemed to fit. When I looked back at the manual I realised I had ordered the part for the military fit (which naturally was different.....). When I wailed and gnashed my teeth to my friend who is rebuilding the military version of the aircraft he went into his garage and came out with the civilian version of the duct. We just looked each other and swapped parts!