Next Fighter Pilot Symposium: June 2 at the Hiller Museum

The Northern California Friends of the Aces (NCF) has announced its next – and possibly final –  symposium of American Fighter Pilot Aces, entitled simply “WWII USAAF Aces.”

On the docket to speak at this event are:

* MAJ Bill Allen  –  5 aerial victories, flying the P-51 (also flew combat in the P-38) withe the 343rd FS, 55th FG;

* COL Abner Aust – 5 aerial victories, flying the P-51 (the last pilot to achieve “ace” in WWII) with the 457th FS, 506th FG

* LT COL Frank Hurlbut – 9 aerial victories, flying the P-38 in the MTO with the 82nd FG

* MAJ Ralph Wandrey – 6 victories, flying the P-38 (flew many missions with Dick Bong) with the 9th FS, 49th FG

The event is June 2 at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California (601 Skyway Road, right out by the airport off Highway 101). The price is $30; I strongly suggest you reserve your space early by sending a check and the names of the folks in your party to:

Northern California Friends

PO Box 5943

Concord, CA 94524

These events are always interesting, and they represent your last chance to meet these aviators in person. Phil Schasker, the president of the NCF, says that it’s harder to get a quartet of aces to speak at these events, just because health and age work against such events. Once the pilots are there, though, the talk is vivid and animated; when you get four pilots speaking of events 70 years ago, they often jog each other’s memories and new stories untold for years come out.

Is anybody interested in staging a model display for this event? Let me know and I can coordinate it with the NCF!

Next Northern California Friends of the Aces Event: May 29 in Vacaville

The next Northern California Friends of the Aces event will be a bit of a grab bag of experiences and theatres, but the people tentatively scheduled to speak are well worth hearing. The lineup for the event scheduled for May 29 at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre is:

Lt. Col. John Bolyard

Cdr. Clarence “Spike” Borley

Cdr. Lester Gray

Gen. F. Mike Rogers

Bolyard scored five victories flying with the 23rd Fighter Group in China, and he did so in the P-4oN and P-51 flying under the Command of “Tex” Hill. Borley flew Hellcats with VF-15 aboard Essex, and scored four kills in one mission, which concluded with his being rescued by a submarine. Gray scored his 5 kills flying the Hellcat and the Corsair from Intrepid with VF-10. Mike Rogers was a member of the Pioneer Mustang Group, the 354th Fighter Group, and downed 7 enemy planes. We modelers know him as the pilot of the P-51B “Beantown Banshee.”

The event’s only $25 – which is really a bargain, considering that the Friends of the Aces pays to transport and lodge these guests. I strongly encourage you to attend if you can – if you like history, airplanes, pilots and pilots flying airplanes who made history, these events should be marked in red on your calendar!

More information can be found at the Northern California Friends of the Aces website.

Next Aces Symposium: May 23 in Belmont

The next Fighter Aces Symposium being held by the Northern California Friends of the Aces will be on May 23 at the Hiller Museum in Belmont, California. This time, the theme will be “Aces with Wings of Gold,” although it could also be “Hellcats Against the Rising Sun.” The scheduled aces on the panel are:

CDR Clarence “Spike” Borley, VF-15 (5 victories)

LCDR Fred “Buck” Dungan, VF(N)-76 (7 victories)

CDR Ralph Foltz, VF-15 (5 victories)

CDR Chuck Haverland, VF-20 (6.5 victories)

After the aces speak about their exploits, there will be an autograph session. Even the folks in the audience tend to be fairly interesting people!

As always, if you want more details on the event, e-mail the NCFA at ncf@hot-shot.com.

Mustang Aces Speak February 21

I just got the flyer for the next Northern California Friends of the Aces event, which is coming up very shortly – February 21. Whether I go may be the subject of some negotiation, since the IPMS/Santa Rosa contest is the day before in Petaluma and I am under orders not to turn entire weekends into all-airplane events.

Anyway, the guests at this Mustang Aces symposium are very interesting. They include:

Maj. Charles Hauver – 5 kills, with the 355th FG
Lt.Gen. George Loving, 5 kills with the 31st FG and author of the book Woodbine Red Leader , which I wrote about here.
Maj. Fred Ohr – 6 kills with the 52nd FG (and the only Korean-American ace!)
Capt. David Wilhelm – 5 kills with the 31st FG

There’s a big 15th Air Force presence here and a story you don’t hear nearly as often as the Eighth Air Force tales. The Mediterranean gets very little attention, even today.

The event’s at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theater, so I doubt we’ll do a model display. These events are always inspirational and give you a direct connection to history, and the organization always does a first-class job of presenting them. To get more information of the event, call (408) 725-8095 or e-mail ncf@hot-shot.com.

Navy aces in Belmont, July 19

The next Northern California Friends of the Aces event is on July 19; Phil Schasker gave me the flyer a week ago, but I’ve been so busy I failed to get the news up here until now. Anyhow, that event will again be at the Hiller Museum in San Carlos, and this time the theme is Navy and Marine Corps aces. The panelists this time will be:

Col. Dean Caswell – 7 victory Ace with VMF-221 in the F4U Corsair
Capt. Bob Coats – 9 victory Ace with VF-18, VF-17 in the F6F Hellcat
LCdr. Jim Duffy- 5 victory Ace with VF-15 in the F6F Hellcat
Capt. Sheldon Hall – 6 victory Ace with VMF-213 in the F4U Corsair
Ens. Don McPherson – 5 victory Ace with VF-83 in the F6F Hellcat

I don’t know if we’ll do a model display – I’ll poke around and see who in the region would be interested in such a thing. It would be neat to have a few Hellcats, Corsairs and maybe a Zero or two on display to show off the hardware these brave aviators worked with and against!

If you want to go to the symposium, I’d drop the Northern California Friends of the Aces a note at NCF@hot-shot.com. They’ll happily give you all the details!

Models keep coming up aces…

Last weekend was the P-47 Fighter Aces Symposium at the Hiller Aviation Museum, featuring four aces – Richard Fleischer of the 348th FG, Frank McCauley and Les Smith of the 56th FG, and David Thwaites of the 356th FG. It was an entertaining afternoon, and perhaps this nugget was the most interesting to come out of it: McCauley and Smith had been assigned the same flight and had flown many missions together, but this even was the first time they’d seen each other since 1944!

Unfortunately, we didn’t stage a model display at this symposium; I didn’t hear back from anyone about it, and so I decided to take this one off and go simply as a spectator. However, a couple people at the event asked me about the model display, since they’d enjoyed seeing it in the past, which is nifty incentive to work up a display for the next event, featuring Navy and Marine aces, on July 19 at the Hiller Museum (I’ll have names when they become available to me). I’d try to knock out a Corsair between now and then, but that would probably result in an extra-bent bent-winged bird, so I’ll fall back on my Alex Vraciu Hellcat instead!

That got me to thinking about the ace machines I have in my collection of built-ups. I’ve always tried to shy away from the over-done aircraft and leaned toward the “rank and file,” but I do have a big splash of aces in the case. To wit:

• Bill Dunham’s P-47 “Bonnie” (16 victories)
• Morton Magoffin’s P-47D “Carol Ann II” (5 Victories)
• Alan Deere’s Spitfire Mk I “Kiwi” (22 victories)
• Otmar Kucera’s Hurricane Mk II (6 victories)
• Jack Ilfrey’s P-38J “Happy Jack’s Go Buggy” (7.5 victories)
• Alex Vraciu’s F6F-5 (19 victories)
• Warren “Smokey” Schrader’s Tempest Mk. V (11.5 victories)
• Joe McGraw’s FM-2 “Mah Baby” (6 victories)
• William Whisners’s P-51B “Princess Elizabeth” (24 victories)

It’s pretty obvious why the aces command so much attention from modelers – they grabbed fame while flying and still command attention today, so people want to build their aircraft. Decal manufacturers respond to demand, so the aces are disproportionately represented in decal form. So that cycle continues. And, of course, a single-engine plane’s a quicker build than a multi-engine bomber or even a multi-place attack plane, so more fighters get built than any other type.
Here’s what the build queue at the workshop looks like right now:

• Martin 167 Maryland (this week’s subject for work)
• P-40E Warhawk
• P-51D-5 Mustang
• P-47D Thunderbolt
• Fairey Firefly V

Of those, two are ace machines – the P-40E of Jim Morehead and (oddly enough) the Maryland of Adrian Warburton. So the pattern continues!

What proportion of aces ends up in your collection? And is it because the decals available happen to be aces, or do you seek out ace subjects for your models? I’d be interested to know.

Thanks for boxes, aces and friends

John McCain can go pound sand – I am clearly more of a maverick. Who else wears neckties to every model contest? Who else listens to Pandora.com with one earphone just to hear the crazy stereo separation on Beatles songs (“Hello Goodbye” is really sparse in just the left channel…)? And who else has a column about what he’s grateful for a week after Thanksgiving? Am I out of control or what?

Let me calm down. Okay. Whew.

I just wanted to express my belated thanks to Randy Ray. Randy was laid off about three weeks ago, and since I subscribe to the concept that idle hands are the devil’s playthings (the devil clearly needs a hobby), I asked Randy to pick up some boxes for Obscureco purposes. Being gainfully employed in San Francisco makes it a bee-yatch for me to get to my suppliers in San Jose, but Randy made the rounds and delivered the boxes during his between-work time. If you got an Obscureco item in the last couple of weeks, you should thank Randy, too. Thanks, Randy!

I’m also pleased to say that Phil Schasker of the Northern California Friends of the Aces and I had a chance to talk about the missed communication at the last aces event. Phil’s computer went kerplunk just as I started e-mailing him about the event, so he wasn’t ignoring me – his roasted motherboard was. I look forward to the next event and the next model I’ll not finish in time for a display. I’m thinking P-38 here. Actually, I’m inclined to do an F-5 more than a P-38 right now – unless Academy surprises me with a P-38F (new booms, people! C’mon!). If I had an F available, I’d like to Besby Holmes’ Yamamoto mission plane.

That’s for the future, though. Here’s a status report on what’s in the queue:

F-4B Phantom II (Bill Freckleton/Garry Weigand, VF-111): awaiting decals.
P-47D (Ray Murphy, 379th FS/362nd FG): Awaiting paint and an engine.
P-51D-5 (Bart Tenore, 354th FG): Awaits paint.
Martin 167 Maryland (Adrian Warburton, Malta): Needs to have the wings stuck on.
P-40E (Jim Morehead, 49th FG): Needs to have the fuselage sealed up.
Firefly V (no scheme selected): Needs to have anything done to it at all.

The thing I’m discovering is that I am mostly motivated to build by the story of the people who built the planes – a model of some generic aircraft, no matter how graceful or colorful it is doesn’t hold the same allure. This may make it tough when I go to build a TS-11 Iskra or some other more exotic and utilitarian plane, or an airliner; it may be hard to isolate a story out of those subjects.

Photos next time…

Staying home and grinding styrene

The weekend was, modeling-wise, okay. The big accomplishment was the addition of photoetched wheel bays to my Academy 1:72 P-40E, which was accomplished with much cursing (and motor-tool-ing). The bays themselves look reasonably nice, but they stand proud of the lower wing enough to completely mess up the fit of the wing halves on the trailing edge. Furthermore, the inner wing’s flange (for want of a better word) needs to be opened up to accommodate them, and the resin cockpit tub I was using needed to have the considerable lower plug of resin removed (which it needed to get the wing on in the first place – the wheel wells just dictated further reduction of the material below the floor).

I’d heard via various people that the Academy kit’s fuselage proportions were out of whack and the most accurate model was still the Hasegawa P-40E. To discern this for myself, I took one fuselage half from each kit and put them together. They fit as if they were from the same kit, which makes me very skeptical about these accuracy experts – especially since I heard the same thing about Academy’s Tempest V and their P-39, which both math the supposedly more accurate Heller kits in the same way (although the Heller Tempest kit’s landing gear, prop and horizontal tails are, in fact, more accurate, and the P-39’s fuselages are equally inaccurate). This leads me to two conclusions:

1. Academy is adept at knocking off other people’s basic kits, then refining them and adding extras
2. The accuracy experts need to be looked at with a jaundiced eye

There was a Northern California Friends of the Aces event this weekend, and the plan was to have a model display, but I did not go. After last time’s confusion over a table for us at the last event, I tried to contact the president of the group to make sure this minor logistical consideration – one table – could be accommodated. I never heard back from him, which leads me to think that we are not wanted there. That’s a real bummer, since we put their flyers out at model contests and meetings to promote these events, and the model displays do attract some positive attention from the people at the aces symposia. Instead of heading out Sunday to likely disappointment and frustration, I decided to stay home. Until I get some confirmation that the NCFA wants to work with us, I’m not going to try to coordinate any model displays for their events. It’s just a waste of my time and it sours me on their organization.

Raising the Jolly Roger over San Carlos

Another aces symposium has been announced by the Northern California Friends of the Aces, this one on November 9 at the Hiller Museum in San Carlos. As was the cast last fall, this one will focus on Navy aces, and the focus is very sharp: the theme is Aces of VF-17 and VF-18, the “Jolly Rogers.” The men on the panel are scheduled to be Charles Mallory (10 kills), Billy Watts (8.75) , Bill Hardy (6.5), Ted Crosby (5.25) and Jim Pearce (5.25), all of whom were Hellcat aces. As always, the local club is planning a display; Cliff Kranz is building four Hellcats, he says, and he’s the kind of modeler who’s likely to finish them. I think we’ll do another Navy Aces display; that’ll give me a chance to break out my Alex Vraciu F6F-3 and the FM-2 of Joe McGraw (which I was supposed to be building for the navy aces event last October…!). If any other Bay Area modelers would like to participate, let me know.

The event’s at 12:15 at the Hiller Aviation Museum; for more information you can e-mail the Northern California Friends of the Aces.

Ouches, aces and housekeeping

Quite the weekend! On Saturday, I went to the gym and, in the process of making myself healthier, tore up my right shoulder. I apparently thought myself to be a quick healer because I didn’t stop and finished the whole workout. It still hurts a bit today, and although I just think it’s a muscle pull, it was bad enough that my wife said I was moaning in my sleep last night. I think I may have just been having a nightmare about a building a Merlin kit or something.

On Sunday we had the P-40 Aces Symposium up in Sacramento, and Mark Joyce led the way with five P-40s. Marty Sanford had his repossessed lend-lease P-40E and I brought a P-40L to make seven. When I arrived, the folks running the show at first said we couldn’t have a table, which was somewhat odd. Luckily, by now I know people at the museum, and Mark got a table and got the location for our display okay’d PDQ. We had no ace close encounters – this was an older-than-usual bunch and they weren’t really up for a lot of wandering around – but it was neat to meet Jim Morehead. Now I just have to build the man’s P-40, like I’ve been intending to do since May…

Monday was Labor Day and labor we did. Elizabeth and I cleaned the office/workshop – or at least my half was cleaned, while Elizabeth got a good start on her stuff. In the evening I had time enough to paint the black theatre stripes on my P-51D-5 and got its prop all finished up. I think I’m going to paint the props and wheels first from now on, and get the landing gear struts cleaned up right after that. That way, when I get to the end of the build and I’m excited to finish, some of the tedious small stuff will be done. Just an idea…

I also ordered the Xtrakits Canberra PR.9 and the Sea Vixen today, along with some True Details P-40 interiors (for the aforementioned Morehead P-40E). The CMK interior just doesn’t cut it compared to the True Deatils set, and the Eduard pre-painted parts just look weird to me. They just don’t seem to fit well with the rest of the model… They’re a little too stark when they’re larger parts (like entire sidewalls in the P-40’s case) and they don’t have the same feel as the rest of the model. Getting the model to look “unified” takes a real talent, and these parts may be print-quality accurate but they don’t feel right. It’s hard to explain – would someone care to take a crack at it in the comments?