WarBird Week at Work

I found this beauty parked behind our plane in a hanger in Worcester Massachusetts. Its a restored North American A-36 Apache. A very rare warbird, only about 500 built, and the only one I've ever seen. North American eventually put a fancy Brittish engine in the same style airframe and turned it into the P-51 Mustang. I hear that one proved to be pretty popular.



This is a Marine F18 they parked us next to, two days later in Phoenix. Not as rare, but still pretty cool.

Nice!

i have to say that the A-36 really caught my attention

i always love an old,rare and forgoten machine more than a famous and well know one, wether they are planes,cars,trains,ships,guns or anything made by man to improve their lives or end the ones of the enemy, each one of them has a story behind, a succes or a failure

last but not least very nice pictures MJ and thanks for the info i didn't know that plane till now

An OV-1 Mohawk, a Vietnam era observation/light attack aircraft I found in Racine WI.

The rebuilt remnants of a wrecked P-51 Mustang they hung from the ceiling at Paige Field in Ft. Myers FL.

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While not a WarBird, this is a cool and very rare flying Grumman Albatross. A huge flying amphibian I found in Jacksonville FL.

the last one brought back a few memories first thing that came to my mind as soon i saw the picture was ''tales of the golden monkey'' but the one in the show was a grumman goose

and i remember that in the 40s and 50s lots of amphibious planes used to land in the river at buenos aires, most of them were PBY catalinas, i still have some old black and white photos of those

I stumbled on to an impromptu T-28 fly in, in Trenton, NJ.  The T-28 was a post WW2 Navy trainer.  I have some co-workers who used to be Navy pilots and they go on and on about how much fun these things were to fly.   I will say though, that every civilian pilot who owns one of these, seems to have a huge ego, behaves like a huge jackass, but flys with subpar skills and has problems following simple ATC instructions.

All good looking birds and cool.

This was such a crazy find.  It is a Falcon 20, but it is painted up in Norwegian military colors, has all kinds of extra antennas, and a big downward looking radar on its belly.  If I had to guess, I would say that it is some sort of command and control jet, or a submarine tracking jet.  You find the strangest stuff in Lincoln Nebraska.

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This is a P-2 Neptune I saw in Santa Maria California.  This fire fighting outfit had converted several to fire fighting duty.  I find that sort of thing is really cool.  When I retire from my regular flying job, I may try my hand at flying for one of these groups.

This is another Marine F-18 That I saw in Albuquerque New Mexico.  This one caught my eye because it was carrying real ordinace.  I had a funny conversation with the pilot.  Normally I am pumping them for information about their planes, but he was getting ready to retire from the Marine Corps and was asking me a million questions about the company I worked for.

This is a Fouga CM.175.  A french jet trainer in civilian hands at the Santa Fe New Mexico airport.  The Fougas have a unique look, but they have brick like flying characteristics.  I know someone who owns one and he took me up for a ride and let me fly it.  I was grateful for the opportunity, but every other corporate jet I've flown has had more performance.  I was really underwhelmed by this thing.

at first i thought the first one was a B25, nice find btw

as for the last one, the french trainer, man that thing is ugly

btw i was traveling the highway some days ago and i saw this



its a beechcraft C45 dunno who left it there and if it still can be reconstructed but its sad to see such a nice machine in that shape

I love the photo.  I find it really odd that someone would keep such a dilapidated plane on display like that.  

I watched a group in Kalamazoo Michigan take a wildcat, that had been at the bottom of Lake Michigan for 50 years, and restore it to flying condition.  It was in much worse shap then your bird there.  It just takes talented mechanics and lots and lots of money.  There are still lots of C45s being used to fly freight around, so I doubt anyone will want to sink the money necessary to bring this back to flying shape.  I do hate to see good planes  rot away like that.

Here's something that I think you guys might like:

And this is a pre-WW2 flying wing developed by germany:

Top one is the Fliegenderpfannkuchen...

man i love those crazy designs of the early 20th century, nice find nightwing

also is it me or there no more crazy inventors out there trying to create new aircraft or means of transportation i would have loved to live on those times when you could build a car or a plane inside your own garage, now you even need a 24/7 job to buy a decent TV set, its like ppl don't have free time anymore to think in weird science or vehicle designs:(

In the MB fanfic that I'm trying to write, I imagine one vehicle that's a bastard cross between two V22 Ospreys, a capital I and a centipede.
If that isn't crazy, I dunno what is...

Viking Jack wrote:man i love those crazy designs of the early 20th century, nice find nightwing

also is it me or there no more crazy inventors out there trying to create new aircraft or means of transportation i would have loved to live on those times when you could build a car or a plane inside your own garage, now you even need a 24/7 job to buy a decent TV set, its like ppl don't have free time anymore to think in weird science or vehicle designs:(

You mean like this one?: https://moonbreakers.forumotion.com/t605p90-the-physics-of-space-battle#16460

i thought in your plane and you abstract but the 1 million dolar question is can you build that thing without a huge corporation backing you?

today its imposible to get materials at a good price or a proper working place like the scientist in the early 20th century
just think that nearly all the good things we have today were once just a prototype that came out of the garage or the workshop of somebody with a lot of curiosity and free time