Aero Vintage Books

Just found this Post War shot of her taken in the 1950s at Will Rodgers Airport

Great find! Soon to become N66568; bits of it live on in 44-6393 at March Field. Did California Airmotive buy this plane in 1951, like its other B-17s with near-consecutive N-numbers?

From a web page on LAB B-17's

http://markspersonalfiles.blogspot.com/ ... fleet.html


Boeing B-17G c/n 9300

History:
Boeing Co. built: 1943
USAAF 43-38322 Wright Field - (OH) 20 Jul 1944

Great Falls AAF -(MT) 23 Jul 1944

Mat Com Wright - Materiel Command or Air Corps Maintenance Command 27 Jul 1944

ATS Dayton - Air Technical Service 11 Jan 1945

Clinton County AAF -(OH) 30 Jan 1945

- incident ? 14 Feb 1945

Wright Field 5 Mar 1945

4142 BU Wright Field - base unit 19 Mar 1945

4000 BU Wright 20 Apr 1945

RFC Claremore - Reconstruction Finance Corps - (OK) - sold as scrap in US 18 Jan 1946

Oklahoma Military Academy - Rogers County OK 1946

Frank J Abel 5 Jan 1948

Alvin B Graff 11 May 1949

Owen W Williams / California Atlantic Airways - N66568 18 Jan 1951
- St. Petersburg FL
LAB CB-80 5 Aug 1951

LAB CP-580 1 Oct 1954
- crashed at La Paz 7 Feb 1965
- no details - stripped for parts for CP-627
- later rebuilt at La Paz
Frigorifico Reyes - La Paz CP-936 1971
- crashed at San Ignacio de Moxos 11 Feb 1972
- no details - stripped for parts for CP-627
- w/o written off

Went through the Classmates yearbooks for OMA - unfortunately they skip from 1942 to 1951. That book has a cameo appearance by 322, sheltering its "little friend":

The Airport was Will Rodgers - Claremont

http://www.airfieldsdatabase.com/OK/OK% ... 3OKdir.jpg

Long gone


36°19'45"N / 95°35'59"W


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.anc ... rport1.jpg

you look at this aircraft's card - I can not imagine this airfield being an RFC Depot -- Dirt Strip

That just leave me to wonder if this aircraft was delivered by the AAF specifically for this military academy (and was it somebody associated with the school)

If this was a delivery address, this is the first card I seen where it states final destination (to a civil airport for display, etc)

Just make you also wonder if the military academy took delivery on the same date as it was assigned --

edit -> if you look two lines above, you also see OKLMILACD -- Oklahoma Military Academy on 20 January 1946 <- so that answers that question......

I think the airplane was passed to the military academy by the RFC for educational purposes. That's not reflected by the record card but it would appear the aircraft never got to an actual RFC storage yard. Rather, it was earmarked for the academy by the RFC and delivered directly there by the AAF ferry crew instead of to an RFC field.

Great find of a photo.