Sometimes it's the little things

[Vegas Halo Fan]

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of my father's death (he died three days after my mother's birthday; she died on his birthday in 1984). I was thinking about some of the fun things we used to do when I was younger. One of my favorites was when he took me to the Florida Air National Guard base at Imeson Airport in Jacksonville (which was replaced in 1968; it's an industrial park now) and I sat under the wing of an F-102 in the Florida heat and drank a Sprite out of a glass bottle. My father was a World War II veteran who joined the Florida Air National Guard at its inception. They flew P-51s when he started, and the F-106 was the last plane he worked on before retiring.

I was thinking about a plane that was assigned to his unit back then, a Douglas C-47 (the military version of the DC-3). The plane was with the unit for many years and then she was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone in the mid 1960s. My father once made a very long trip in this plane, from Jacksonville to Alpena, MI for a summer field training exercise. He told us, off the record, that he was at the controls of this plane for about ten minutes on the way back from Alpena while the pilot went to the rest room. My father was the Electric Shop chief. He said that the pilot told him, "Take over here, keep her straight and level, I'm going to the can." I remember going with my mother to wait for him at the airport as the plane arrived and everyone deplaned. My father worked for many hours keeping this plane in the air, and he fondly remembered the "gooney bird" even years after she was sent to Panama. I tried finding out what happened to her, expecting to find out that she had either been scrapped or had wound up with a low-budget airline in South America and crashed while landing at some remote dirt airfield. My original searches using the USAF tail number yielded nothing - for a while. Then I found her:

I know this plane from the tail number. The last time I saw her she was in a bare metal finish. She has been restored to her World War II colors. Somebody in the USAF apparently knew the significance of this plane in the history of the Florida Air National Guard and brought her home at the end of her service. She has been preserved at the Camp Blanding Museum near Starke, FL.

 

A destination has just been added to my next Florida trip.

[gotbeer]

Nice story.  

[arch stanton]

Good that you could find the actual tail number. Better there than in the bone yard at D-M.

[wopphil]

Excellent post Vegas, thoroughly interesting.

[wopphil]

I think they have a couple of these planes at the Lyon Air Museum near John Wayne Airport. They are gorgeous planes, and surprisingly light.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

This is an emotional thing for me. I feel like I have found something tangible that still remains of what was a very big part of my father's life. It's hard for me to explain. In the same museum, also preserved for display, is one of the F-106s that was among the final group of planes he worked on before he retired. I hope that they have also kept one of the F-102s, one of the planes I sought shade from the summer sun under when I was about ten years old.

 

As far as the tail number goes, it is one of several bits of what I have up until now considered useless trivia circulating in my brain that I would never need again (like the VIN off the first new car I bought, a 1973 Plymouth Satellite Sebring).

Edited February 1, 2015 by Vegas Halo Fan

[Vegas Halo Fan]

I chatted with my sister tonight on Facebook. She is studying at the University of Florida to be a nurse practitioner. While most of her class work is online, she occasionally has to drive from Jacksonville to Gainesville (about an hour and a half trip by car) to see her advisor on campus. Depending upon which route you take, sometimes you pass directly by Camp Blanding. I told her this story, and she paused. "I drove by that plane twice on Tuesday", she said. "I had no idea that it was the very gooney bird that Daddy used to talk about."

Edited February 1, 2015 by Vegas Halo Fan

[ELEVEN]

Best Florida thread ever.

[Vegas Halo Fan]

This is a question that I never expected an answer to. There are even planes sitting in museums that you cannot find registration records for. I have not found a registration record for this plane to know where she went or what she did after leaving FANG in the 1960s. Someone who knows these things far better than I do says that her full registration number is 42-100597 (meaning that she was built in Fiscal Year 1942). I was trying every variation I could think of, some with tail numbers and some without, and I tried C-47 Florida to see if maybe at least there was an old photo of her somewhere on the internet (I never found a historical photo). The FANG website has several historic photos (I didn't see my father in any of them) that included some of their older planes, but none of the C-47. On about the third page of my last search I saw something about a C-47 at Camp Blanding. The first couple of photos were taken from in front of the plane, so I couldn't see the tail number. Then I saw a side shot. My eyes welled with tears when I saw the tail number. Something that my father spent countless hours maintaining will be forever preserved.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Vegas Halo Fan

[Redondo]

Good story. Thanks for sharing 

[ten ocho recon scout]

Great story. Hope you get to see it soon

[Vegas Halo Fan]

Will probably go back sometime in August.

[T.G.]

@Vegas Halo Fan just read this thread. Thanks for sharing your story. It certainly made my day better.  And you're right... it's often the "little things."

[Lhalo]

2 questions:

1. Did @Vegas Halo Fan get to see the plane yet?
2. What the hell happened to @ELEVEN?

[Vegas Halo Fan]

I haven't been back to Florida, so no. I will pass it along when I do.

[Lou]

6 hours ago, Lhalo said:

What the hell happened to @ELEVEN

He disappeared once he lost a bet and owed me a beer. 

[Tank]

12 hours ago, Lou said:

He disappeared once he lost a bet and owed me a beer. 

you mean he welshed on a bet?

@ELEVEN, dude.

[tdawg87]

Stop making threads about my penis.

[ten ocho recon scout]

19 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

Stop making threads about my penis.

Thread penis?

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

They kill and tear our brains out again.

[ELEVEN]

On 2/3/2020 at 3:50 PM, Lhalo said:

2 questions:

1. Did @Vegas Halo Fan get to see the plane yet?
2. What the hell happened to @ELEVEN?

I owed Lou a beer so I joined the Witness Protection program.

[ELEVEN]

On 2/4/2020 at 11:03 AM, tdawg87 said:

Stop making threads about my penis.

That's gonna cut into my post count.

[tdawg87]

3 minutes ago, ELEVEN said:

That's gonna cut into my post count.

[Lou]

On 2/5/2020 at 12:42 PM, ELEVEN said:

I owed Lou a beer so I joined the Witness Protection program.



[ELEVEN]

12 hours ago, Lou said:



Put the gun down. I'll be in Phoenix from the 28th thru March 8. If your at ST around then I'll buy you a beer and another beer for "interest".

Otherwise we can settle up in Anaheim. 

Cheers