Warbird Information Exchange

What kind of strange uses have our WIX posters found warbird parts being used for by unknowledgeable civilians?

As a kid in Salem, Oregon in the late 60's we were friends with a State Representative in the north part of town. In the backyard was a P-51D canopy and frame being used to house ducks his kids had caught in the adjoining creek. They called it "the duck lid" and didn't want to part with it because an uncle was a "hero fighter pilot" and they wanted to keep this to remember him by. A shame!

Outside the gate of Hahn Air Base in Germany (1980) and a block or two down the lane in Latzenhausen was an old German man with a nice garden in his fenced backyard. He had old French 50's vintage jet fighter canopies being used as tomato green houses.

Probably the biggest surviving piece of a B-17 from my dad's WWII Bomb Group was found 13 years ago: A large section of the left side vertical tail fin from a 353rd BS/301st BG B-17G-25-VE, s/n 42-97683 complete with markings was found in Germany used as part of a farmer's shed. It is now on display in the National Museum of the USAF’s Air Power Gallery. The tail section was discovered in 1993 by survivors of the 15 march 1945 Ruhland, Germany mission crew visiting the crash site.

See: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsh ... sp?id=1666

I had other examples come to mind of old warbird parts in civilian use but they escape me now.

I have vivid memories of utter disbelief at finding a fence made out of wooden propellor blades when I was walking in the hills above Macclesfield as a teenager.

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Many years ago, while visiting my grandparents hometown in Croatia, I had found sawn-in-half oxygen cylinders being used as well buckets and bomber fuselage panels as farm fencing. Still have not been able to identify what type of aircraft. It had crashed at the nearby village cemetary. The surviving crew was whisked away by partisans, the nazis took the armaments and the townspeople got the remains.

I remember as a kid in the early fifties my dad made a fish tank out of the side blister of a PBY, he probably "rescued" working at NAS Corpus.

Then there's the fellow in Canada who used Kittyhawk wing sections to support his house, made the prop spinner into a barbecue, and made his son a pedal car out of one of the gear fairings !

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Years ago there was a auto scrap yard near the Novato dump. There was hippie school bus in the yard that had some kind of bubble canopy mounted onto the roof of the bus as a "sky light" or "observation dome". Pretty funny looking....

I believe Tom Reilly aquired a B-17 waist section that was buried and had been used as a potato or beet celler from a farm in the midwest.
I think it might actually have been used to reconstruct the B-17 walk-through display at Fantasy of Flight, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
Jerry

well, there was that farmer in Canada who'd used Lancast wing panels to side a shed.

There was the forward fuselage of a Sikorsky S-43 flying boat, being used as a house boat in Alaska (it's now at the Alaskan Aviation Museum).

Similar houseboats in Australia using a Dornier 24, and Catalina too if IIRC.

Then there was the Supermarine Walrus used as a caravan in the UK.

Don't forget the B-24 fuselage used as a house in Australia either, or the PB4Y-2 fuselage as a forestry building here in the states.

The Focke-Wulf 200 fuselage section usedas a carport.

Lots of stuff out there!

Cheers,
Richard

How about the TBD Devestators being used as artifical reefs!
And who can forget all the aircraft in Papua New Guinea being used as bird and insect nesting sites!
Opps, I mean aircraft that national treasures on display for all to see.
What was I thinking!!!?:cry:
Jerry

I've always thought it would be very cool to see all of the photographs people have collected over the years compiled into one book on this very subject. To see all of the trailers, tractors, outbuildings, machinery, toys, vehicles, farms equipment, furniture etc. that incorperated fighter plane parts from WWII all in one book would be awesome. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Don't forget the Howard Hughes Boeing Stratoliner that has been converted to a yacht. The Cosmic Muffin.

http://www.planeboats.com/

There is also a wingless 727 converted to a house on a pedestal. You enter through the rear stair and the cockpit has been retrofitted with a hot tub !

In Mexico I saw a R-2800 built into a rock fence, and the horizontal and verticals from a Harpoon forming the roof to a chicken coop, same house had the wings as the floor for the 2nd floor

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
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It’s not that old but I have a horizontal stabilizer from an F-15 that I made into a picnic table. Odd shape but it does open people’s eyes when they see it!

In Switzerland, a company producing window shutters, etc. used a D-3801 Morane without wings as wind-machine to test their products' performance in strong winds and also heavy rain.....

another company manufacturing surface-to-air missiles (Skyguard) used a C-3603 in similar fashion to test the transport / storing tubes of these rockets in strong winds and saltwater (for use on ships)

this is how these aircraft survived and could be restored to airworthyness.

The use of P-51D and C-3603 canopies as greenhouses was also common here in Switzerland; and one can find the combustion chambers of Hawker Hunter Avon jet-engines in use as garden-barbeques....

P-51D-wheels, and other former aircraft wheels, saw and still see active use on agricultural trailers...... (see here http://www.swissmustangs.ch/46492/47092.html )

Martin