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Attn shoppers (speaking of obscure): 43-39269
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2024 9:08 pm
by Chris Brame
They Were There comes up with another one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/156082279082
Quoting Osborne again, what little there is:
David Osborne wrote:Delivered Cheyenne 25/1/45; Hunter 23/2/45; ATC San Francisco 9/3/45; Assigned Manila 14/5/46.
Scott, terveurn, care to fill us in?
Re: Attn shoppers (speaking of obscure): 43-39269
Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:32 pm
by jmkendall
Wild guess, at first glance she looks to be canbird. What looks like damage to the wing is just scrap metal lying on top.
Could be that sometime after the war she was in the PI and had a hard landing and with the rush to scrap the AC in the zoi, the AC at Clark were used as a parts source to keep the Pacific AC airworthy. Note the P-61s kept till the F-15s were withdrawn for service. There were a good number of B-17s in the Pacific doing Air Rescue, VIP, Atomic testing and other utility roles. They needed some parts sources and it seems someone was a bit shortsighted in not leaving enough parts around to support the fleet.
HIndsight being what it is, I Bet someone was cursing them for scrapping the complete but unaccepted B-17s at Douglas instead of reducing them to components and using them as spares. There is a pic of either Biak or Morotai which shows two B-17s that had been picked to a fair thee well...and today would be considered prime candidates for a restoration project.
Anyway.....