P40 Model

Once again, the New Garden Festival of Flight was a big success with big crowds and two thrill-packed days of exhibits and exhibitions. This P-40 was just one of many vintage war aircraft on display.

The two-day air show offered many aerial displays such as aerobatics from wing-walker Jane Wicker, stunt-flying by Matt Chapman in a CAP 580, the flight of the C-54 Spirit of Freedom, and demonstrations from the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) including those of the P-40 Warhawk and the P-51D Mustang.

“The CAF was originally formed in 1957 by two WWII bomber pilots who purchased some old planes from the war,” said Stan Musick, CAF pilot of the P-51. Dedicated to the preservation of WWII-era aircraft, the CAF endeavours to acquire and maintain their aircraft in an operational state in order to provide the public with firsthand knowledge of the capabilities and the history of these vintage war planes. The largely volunteer-staffed organization has roughly 130-functional WWII aircraft from both the Allied and Axis sides.

Vintage aircraft were not the only ones to be present at the festival, however: an Air Force B-2 stealth bomber made a flyby during the festival on Saturday, providing the crowd with a look at the current generation of military airpower.

This year’s festival also drew a wide variety of patrons, including some veterans. “I used to be a B-25 pilot in the South Pacific during World War II,” Joseph Miller said, dressed in his original Army Air Corps uniform. The York, PA native is the owner of an L-3B Grasshopper housed at New Garden and travels “all over the country” to air shows. “I think these events are important for the general public, and especially the younger generations, to learn about the Second World War,” he said.

Source: The Unionville Times

The Cavanaugh Flight Museum (CFM) will fly many of its treasured WWII, Korean and Vietnam-era airplanes, including: the P-51 Mustang,FM2 Wildcat, T-28B Trojan, OV1D Mohawk and “FiFi” the world’s only flyable Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

Along with these great warbirds is the P-40 Warhawk. The Cavanaugh Flight Museum’s P-40N (serial number 44-7369) was constructed at the Curtiss-Wright plant in Buffalo, New York and was delivered to the Army Air Force (AAF.) On May 26,1944. The plane was sent in June 1944 to Peterson Army Air Field, Colorado Springs, Colorado and served with the 268th AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training Station-Fighter, Second Air Force).

In March 1945, the P40 aircraft was transferred to the 232nd AAF Base Unit (2nd A.F.), stationed at the Dalhart Army Air Field (Texas). In June 1945, the plane was disposed as surplus.

The P-40N was purchased by the museum in 1995 from Joseph Mabee, who had owned the aircraft since 1978. Today, the aircraft is painted in the scheme of Major General Charles R. Bond, Jr.’s No. 5 and is representative of P-40Bs and P-40Es flown by the Flying Tigers in the early days of World War II. The aircraft often appears at air shows across the country.

Source: prlog.org, cavanaughflightmuseum.com

On Feb. 16, Franklin County re-named its airport in honor of a dedicated aviator that helped to bridge the two eras.

The airport is now known as the Franklin County Apalachicola Regional Airport – Cleve Randolph Field in recognition of the significant role Randolph played in founding and developing the airport ever since the Army constructed the airfield as a training facility on the eve of World War II.

At the ceremony attended by about 200 people, inside the hangar of Garlick Environmental on the airport grounds, dignitaries paid tribute to Randolph’s work, outlined in the resolution passed unanimously by the county commission on Jan. 4.

“This is a great day, and one we have been waiting for for far too long,” said Ken Tucker, a World War II tail gunner who was a contemporary of Randolph’s. “He dedicated his life to the airport. You did a great deed when you dedicated this airport to him. It has great potential; keep in mind what you have here.”

Former Clerk of Courts Pal Rivers, a retired Navy aviator who earned his pilot’s wings together with Randolph when the two trained during the war at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, was given the honor of reading the resolution to the gathering.

The resolution summed up the life of a man dedicated from his youth, when he worked summers at the airport as it was being constructed, to the expanding field of aviation.

In an interview after the ceremony, Rivers told of how the young Randolph, while away at school in Cullman, Ala., had secretly used the money his parents sent him to take flying lessons, and then flew home one day to the astonishment of his parents.

Because he had prior military service as a cadet commander in a civilian role, Randolph entered the service as an aviation cadet, and after the war, returned to the county and later opened a flying school at the airport, where he lived with his wife Smiles, and their four children, in the abandoned Army barracks there.

Another of Randolph’s contemporaries, Bubba Gander, who also earned his naval aviator wings after the outbreak of the war in Corpus Christi, Texas, sat in the audience’s front row, and clapped appreciatively at the recounting of his friend’s exploits. Another military contemporary, retired Army Col. Harry Buzzett, who served as best man at the Randolphs’ wedding, was absent due to medical treatments he is receiving in Tampa.

The resolution went on to mention that Randolph taught more than 100 local people to fly at the airport. Among them, said Rivers afterwards, was Rivers’ wife of 61 years, the former Anna Laurie McLeod, who learned to fly from Randolph while her husband was at sea on duty assignments during his Navy career as an operations officer.

Randolph opened a seaplane landing base west of Apalachicola, which became a favorite of the late Homer Marks, a prominent businessman who loved to fly to Lake Wimico to hunt geese, Rivers said.

Randolph, who operated the flying school for almost three decades and was the first to open a round-the-clock fuel station and office, regularly flew patients to larger hospitals for medical services, reads the resolution.

Rivers, a native of Green Cove Springs, began his friendship with Randolph after the war, when he would visit his wife’s hometown. Among these trips were the times Rivers flew a Douglas DC-3, like the one on display at the airport Saturday, on cross-country trips out of his duty station overseeing a reserve squadron in Akron, Ohio. “We’d come down here and pick up a load of shrimp,” he said.

Apalachicola resident Bill Spohrer, a member of the International Air Cargo Association’s Hall of Fame, gazed lovingly after the ceremony at the cargo plane, similar to the three such aircraft his company, TAN Airlines, owned in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

That airplane, as well as the Curtiss P-40E Warhawk next to it, were flown down by the Liberty Foundation in honor of the occasion. Pilot Dan Brooks spoke at the ceremony, outlining the historic significance of the aircraft.

“The (P-40) was the most advanced fighter the Army Air Corps had,” he said, comparing it to the equivalent of today’s F-16 or F-22 jets.

With a 1,200-horsepower Allison V-12 engine, the P-40 flew combat missions out of Cole Bay in the Netherlands Antilles, before it was outclassed by the P-51 Mustang. “The military built over 12,000 of them and very few survive today,” he said. “Some guys dug it out of a dump in the ‘80s” and it was later restored by a Kissimmee businessman and is now on display by the Liberty Foundation.

The Douglas DC-3 on display was in the Normandy invasion, Brooks said, and was flown back to France for the 50^th anniversary of that historic beach assault, the largest in human history. Later it would be used as part of the Greenland Expedition Society’s rescue of lost aircraft from nearly 270’ below the surface of the ice cap off Greenland.

- apalachtimes.com