The only flying Seversky in the world
I noticed in comments on the P-36C that our Swedish friends haven't forgotten the P-35s their government once ordered that ended up in the Philippines (where one actually shot down a Zero on December 9, 1941). This is the two-seat trainer version, which was sequestered in 1941 and taken on charge by the USAAF as an AT-12. Ed Maloney obtained it from the mechanic's school at the old Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale (along with the P-47G, P-51A, A6M5 Zero, and Me-262A) where it was used as an instructional airframe. The airplane was restored to flight status in the 1980s, and flies infrequently (there are no spare parts anywhere). It flew this past weekend with the newly-restored P-36C (there are some nice flying shots of the two over at Global Aviation Resource), someone one will never see again.
Anyway, here are the shots I took.
Tom, amazing that this survived to the present. Shades of the 30s, and I can't imagine one of these flying with a P-36, at the same place and time.
I was in San Francisco recently, and maybe one of these days I'll actually get to Chino. I guess they didn't make a lot of the AT-12, real obscure stuff, so all the more surprising it wasn't turned into some postwar appliance, along with a lot of newer airframes.
There is a difference between preserving history and making history. Every time that Seversky leaves the ground its making history. I hope that its treated with kid gloves ... What happened to Walter Sobchak's Corsair which was flown into the ground while practicing some aerobatics for 15 mins of entertainment was folly.
So the photos are preserving the making of history for histories sake and not entertainment. Fingers crossed.
Beautiful. No pressure for the pilot. Lol.
Tom,
I pray that when it flies it is taken around the pattern straight and level and then lands. Nothing foolish.
Don't worry guys, the Seversky is flown like the Zero and the P-26 (also the only flying original examples). Very. Carefully.