Aero Vintage Books

Scott,

I was out garage saling and met an older gentelman who lives not more than seven blocks from me. I believe he was born around 1940.

First; he went to Parks College and confirms there was no B-17 when he attended in 1960.

Second; I'm an AAE ( Aerospace Engineer) and this guy has a simliar degree and worked for NA and perhaps Douglas doing technical drawing.

Here is the really interesting part though, he casually mentioned that in the 60s he worked in Illinois building P-51 from parts obtained from DM. He was working for someone in the state and he and a couple of other mechanics would go down to Davis Monthan and pick up parts and truck them back up to Illinois for reassembly. He specifically said they took a "fusaluge here" and "Wings from there" and various other parts from other wrecks and scrapped birds and put them together. Later he talked about his company doing ferry flights from DM...or some other base in the midwest.

So a couple of questions.

Does anyone know who was operating a P-51 rebuild facility in Illinois ( I think southern Illinois) in the 60s?

And does this sound like someone who should be interviewed? I'm not the interviewing sort of guy...which may sound odd from a guy who spent 8 years as a professional criminal interviewer...but just going and knocking on a guys door out of the blue...not really my thing.

Any advice

The only people I know messing around with P-51's was Cavalier in Florida - they also had the approved IRAN facilities.

But then again, a whole bunch of ex-military, civilian registered P-51's disappeared around 1969 only to end-up being part of the soccer wars.

Is he sure it was P-51's and not T-28's ?

No, he was definitely talking about P-51s. He even showed me a pic of one of them that he had put together He called it a Frankenstang. It had the tail feathers and wings of a bird that had suffered a cockpit fire, and the cockpit and forward fuselage from another aircraft.

The thing was he named names but I just didn't write them down.

Easy for me to say but I think you need to go back and interview this dude and take good notes or bring a tape recorder and pick his brains a bit. Bring a six pack of beer and sit in his garage and see what he remembers...