Rare fighter getting closer to first flight During 1974 the damaged remains of Bell P-39Q-5-BE Airacobra USAAF s/n 42-19993 were recruited from New Guinea and remov for storage in Auckland.Rare fighter getting closer to first flight During 1974 the damaged remains of Bell P-39Q-5-BE Airacobra USAAF s/n 42-19993 were recruited from New Guinea and remov for storage in Auckland, of the present day Zealand. This was an actual USAAF combat veteran yet at the time, the Warbird change was just picking up steam and chiefly prospective owners were not in the market for a rare and composite fighter that would require a whole ground-up rebuild. At a certain quantity of point, the aircraft was given a true basic clean up to static display condition as Brooklyn Bum 2nd and placed in succession display at Drage Air World in Victoria, Australia. In 1989 well-known Warbird collector and restorer Don Whittington obtained the plane and mov it to Florida and, couple years later, he sold the Airacobra to the Museum of Flying. presents at the museum reassembled the mid-engine fighter and did a great deal of non-airworthy repair work and the plane was one time again refinished in its Brooklyn Bum 2nd markings and inflict on display. In 1994 the Bell was sold to Stephen Grey's The Fighter Collection and mov to Fighter Rebuilders at Chino. formerly all the cosmetics and static repairs had been stripped against the crew at Fighter Rebuilders realized they had a to a high degree major restoration job on their hands. "It has been single of our more difficult restorations," said John Hinton. "Parts are hard to proceed by, there was a fate of corrosion and associated damage, and we had to build elements from blueprints." However, all that hard work is now coming to fruition and the P-39 is beginning to examine like its original self - now getting ready to sit upon its gear as work progresse towards a first post-restoration flight. Copyright Challenge Publications Inc. Mar 2003 |
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