AIRLINES

Air Classics, Feb 2005

FLEET IDENTITY

I noticed the photograph of the Fleet floatplane on page 62 of the November 2004 issue. You may be interested to hear that the aircraft appears to be a Fleet Model 2 built in 1930 by Consolidated Aircraft (c/n 294) and fitted with a 100/110-hp Kinner K-5 engine.

Imported to Canada in June 1930 by Fleet Aircraft of Canada (Fort Erie, Ontario), CF-ANF was sold in July to Commercial Airways of Vancouver, British Columbia. The aircraft was resold to three gentlemen from Vancouver (A.M. Wilson, W.O. Mackenzie and R. Drew) in August 1932.

L. Foggin of Vancouver bought the plane in March 1937. CF-ANF was damaged beyond repair near Boundary Bay, British Columbia, on 13 May 1941. It crashed while perfomning aerobatics.

Renald Fortier

Curator, Aviation History

Canada Aviation Museum, Ottawa

THUNDERBOLT OPERATIONS

I enjoyed the recent article on the Republic P-47 and thought readers might like the following information which was supplied by the Office of Statistical Control, Headquarters, Army Air Forces, Washington, DC, under the dates of 8 September 1945 and 27 November 1945:

1) P-47 aircraft first began overseas operations during March 1943 in the European Theater of Operations. By the end of that year, they were operating in the Mediterranean and Southwest Pacific and during 1944 they became operational in all active war theaters except Alaska. From March 1943 through August 1945, they had flown over 546,000 combat sorties and dropped 32,000 tons of bombs; expended over 135 million rounds of .50-cal ammunition and 60,000 rockets.

2) P-47s were used for escorting heavy bombers in the 8th Air Force during the early stages of strategic bombing, but were later used heavily in the 9th AF as a dive bomber and strafer in cooperation with ground activity. The extent of P47 effort as a bomber can be better measured when it is shown that during the first five months of 1945, P-47s flew an average of 1677 sorties and dropped 541 tons of bombs per day. They have also been used for patrol and interception in the Pacific theaters. In its roles as a taci tical fighter, the P-47 frequently carried two half-ton bombs and two 165-gal napalm tanks. From D-Day to V-E Day in ETO, operations of this character exacted a terrific toll of German ground equipment, including some 86,000 railroad cars, 9000 locomotives, 68,000 motor transports, 6000 armored vehicles and tanks, and 60,000 horse-drawn vehicles; destroyed and damaged.

3) The destruction of enemy equipment by P-47s has not been confined to ground material. They have established the enviable record of shooting down 4.6 enemy aircraft in aerial combat for each P-47 destroyed by the enemy. They have destroyed a total of 7067 enemy aircraft during this period of operations through August 1945; 3752 of these in the air and 3315 on the ground.

4) In accomplishing the total effort against the enemy, P-47s flew 1,934,000 hours overseas, consuming 204,504,000 gallons of high octane gasoline. In addition to this overseas flying, they flew 2,416,000 hours training in the Continental United States, consuming 241,600,000 gallons of gasoline.

5) Two-thirds of all the aircraft produced eventually found their way to overseas theaters as US Army Air Force combat aircraft. Fifty-four percent of these were lost due to enemy action and other causes. Losses of aircraft on combat missions was only 0.7% of those dispatched against the enemy.

6) A complete tabulation of P-47 operational statistics follows:

QUESTION MARK

The question mark on the T-33 pictured with Stevie Hinton on page 26 in the December 2004 issue is a memorial to long-time Planes of Fame volunteer and Fighter Rebuilders employee Mark DeLaurell who died in an airplane crash near Palm Springs in July 2001. Mark was affectionately known to his many friends as "Question Mark."

Robert Lewis

via e-mail

SAVING AN F-106

We desperately need help to spread the word for our fund raising efforts. The F-106 interceptor was stationed at K.I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan, from 1971 to 1985. Efforts to retain an aircraft for display were not fruitful at that time. In 1995, K.I. Sawyer was closed, leaving us totally holding the bag.

If you wonder where we are located, we are straight north of Chicago, in the upper peninsula of Michigan. A year ago, a small group of F-106 veterans here managed to get our name on the next to the last F-106 left at DavisMonthan AFB, Arizona.

It has been extremely difficult to raise the funds for this project because we are in a sparsely populated area. We have managed to raise approximately $16,000 but it is going to take about twice that amount to disassemble the aircraft, truck it up here, and restore the plane for static display.

Sadly, much of the USAF heritage and history is fast disappearing from this area. I, among others, think it is imperative to leave a legacy of what the USAF's role was in this area during the Cold War.

We currently have a B-52, F-101, FB-111, T-33, and an ADM-20C on display that the USAF left behind. The F-106 is one of the pieces missing from our aviation history.