April 11, 2007 at 9:39 am
Currently I am doing some research on the well-known incident of 10 May 1945, where Bob Klingman (VMF-312) destroyed a Ki-45 “Nick” by using his propeller to chop up its tail, causing it to crash.
source: http://www.f4ucorsair.com/vmf312/312.html
According to the late Mr Klingman himself, he was flying brand new FG-1D BuNo.87853 that day.
source: http://www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck/podcast/LtCol%20Klingman.mp3
Digging for more info about this aircraft, I discovered that on the 31st of May 1945 it was used to shoot down a Ki-46 “Dinah”, this time used by Tom Liggett of VMF-512!
source: http://www.adamsplanes.com/Liggett%20512.htm
I have the strong suspicion that the first victim was actually a Ki-46 “Dinah” as well, as the Ki-45 wasn’t as high-performant and didn’t have photograhic capabilities. This would mean that BuNo.87853 was used to kill the almost untouchable “Dinah” twice – possibly a unique feat for any allied fighter!
Now I just discovered that BuNo.87853 still exists! Apparently it’s owned by Malcolm Miller of Carpinteria, CA and registered as N9152Z and is currently in a 3-seater(?!) configuration.
sources:
http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N9152Z.html
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/thirdseries9.html
http://www.warbirdregistry.org/corsairregistry/fg1-87853.html
http://www.planedesire.com/aircraft/desire/N9152Z/details.html
I find all this a bit too good to be true, so can anyone please confirm or deny my findings?
Thanks,
Ronnie Olsthoorn
http://www.skyraider3d.com
PS. Any photos of this aircraft, both wartime and post-war are most welcome!
By: Skyraider3D - 11th April 2007 at 23:02
Thanks Martin, I did find that post. Bit sketchy though and some of the photos are gone unfortunately.
I’ve talked to Rob Mears, one of our resident Corsair experts, about this machine and he too is a bit puzzled to what happened to it and where it could be now.
Incidentally I made a similar post on WIX: http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12415
By: wieesso - 11th April 2007 at 22:46
‘It could well be that what you saw was a “Kit set” of parts comprised of parts from several sources to comprise a Complete aircraft 87853 could be a source of some parts but so could the original serial and there may well be good reasons not to explore all of this at this stage online?’
Have a look…
Martin