The Collings Foundation’s unique Curtiss P-40B Warhawk has finally arrived back in the United States. It didn’t fly home, but rather took the slow boat from England, disassembled inside a shipping container. The fighter is currently with Gary Norville’s American Aero Services in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Norville’s capable crew, long-associated with Collings Foundation restorations, is already reassembling the Warhawk, and plan to have her flying again by early September.
As some of our readers will be well aware, this P-40 can trace its wartime history back to December 7th, 1941. It was stationed that day at Wheeler Field on Oahu, Hawaii, but amazingly suffered no damage during the Japanese the attack. In fact, she remains one of the two only surviving, airworthy American aircraft from the infamous Pearl Harbor raid. The other aircraft is the Grumman J2F-4 Duck owned by Chuck Greenhill.
The Collings Foundation’s P-40B was one of just 131 P-40Bs to roll off Curtiss’s factory in Buffalo, New York during 1940-1941. She joined the US Army Air Corps as 41-13297 in March 1941, moving to Wheeler Field, Hawaii in April to join the 19th Pursuit Squadron of the 18th Pursuit Group. In October 1941, the Warhawk suffered a wheels-up landing. The damage required a spell in a maintenance hangar for repair, and this is perhaps why the airframe survived.
She was still in the hangar when the Japanese raided Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Following maintenance she returned to her original squadron. However, on January 24th, 1942, with only 56 hours of flight time, she spun out of control while on a routine training flight and crashed into a mountain killing her pilot Lt. Kenneth Wayne Sprankle. The crash occurred in a rather inaccessible area of the island, so after retrieving Sprankle’s body, the recovery team left the aircraft in place, and there she stayed for the next five decades.
http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/unique-p-40b-arrives-american-aero-services.html
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