This is a tribute to one of the local Daytona Beach men who were killed in the line of duty. He also happened to be a famous football player who could have gone professional. He set many records that remained intact until the 1960’s. He played football for the University of Florida and there he was considered a “triple threat”. He could kick, throw and run the football. He was offered a full time position with the Rams playing professional football.

Instead he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

During my research on him, I discovered that he had attended one of the same schools that I went to. It was called Mainland High School when he attended, and it was almost a brand new school being completed several years earlier in 1925.

Lt. Mayberry graduated from this school in 1933. Several years later he was accepted to the University of Florida, where he set out to study law. Here is where his football playing skills began to get noticed and where he set several records that remained in place for years to follow.

When I went to this school it was only used to teach the 7th Grade. Then it was eventually torn down in the early 1990’s.

I’m going to be covering more of this soon as I have a deadline to get this Corsair done and posted in the headlines on March 4th.

This is the anniversary of the day when Lt Mayberry was executed by the Japanese near Rabaul which was part of what is now called “The Tunnel Hill Massacre”.

30 Allied Prisoners of War were executed on March 4th and 5th. Half were killed on one day and the other half were killed on the next.

This War crime was never prosecuted and the men who did this got away with murder.

Ironically the Corsair that LT Mayberry was shot down in was Bureau Number 02351. Theres a more famous Corsair called Daphne C and it was flown by Captain James Cupp. It was Bureau Number 02350.

This Corsair was built directly in front of the Corsair that Mayberry was flying. I have this one done and it is on display in my case next to the rest of the Corsairs I have built.

As a heads up, I have been building this Corsair and now it’s actually done to the point where it matches with the Ashmun Corsair.

I will be adding regular installments to show in detail how it was built.

Please follow along with me as I tell his story. Our hospital has a dedicated War memorial to the local men who gave their lives for freedom.

Tiger Mayberry is here too. There’s also a street nearby and it’s named after him as well.

As always comments are encouraged.

Thanks

Another superb entry, my friend @lgardner , honoring another Great Man.
Looking forward to it!

Great history lesson about a REAL American hero.
Good job, my BFAM!

Ten at once? You have confirmed that it is definitely time for the rubber room! 🙂

Looking forward to watching this circus. It should be quite a show - looks like it's already headed there.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Jeff Bailey (@mikegolf)
Tom Cleaver (@tcinla)
Yes sir, it's time for the rubber room. 🙂
Lis (@lis)

Remember when I said there is a street in Daytona Beach named after Walter Mayberry ?

Here it is. I took this picture on our last hospital visit. The street is next to Halifax Hospital in Daytona Beach.

Halifax Hospital is also the place where the WW2 memorial is for the local men who lost their lives during the War.

Walter Mayberry flew with VMF-121 on Guadalcanal, before he was assigned to VMF-123 and they transitioned into the Corsair in June of 1943.

At this time he flew a F4F Wildcat. Here in this VERY cool picture, Tiger Mayberry can be seen on the far left hand side.

There are two other famous Marine pilots in this picture. Captain Joe Foss in in the middle, and Major John L Smith is on the far right side.

Major John Smith was credited with 19 kills at Guadalcanal. Both he and Joe Foss also earned the Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal.

Joe Foss scored 26 kills during his time on Guadalcanal, and years later in life he became the Governor of South Dakota and he was also the President of the National Rifle Association.

Here are some of the steps that were done to modify the cowling flaps. I simply used one of the extra open cooling flaps, and cut out the closed section.

Using a spare I had, I removed the same number of flaps and glued them in place. Now this one has open flaps all the way around.

You can see where the additional open flaps are green. They have since been painted using a Light Gray color.

Originally I had plans to build up six Tamiya Corsairs. This is part of my Corsair Kindergarten.

Then I decided to add 4 more to the project. Here you can see 3 more wings being assembled.

As usual, comments are encouraged.

Nice information, Louis @lgardner
Very impressive to see all these Corsairs at their production facility.

Here is another installment on the Mayberry Corsair.

Remember the Corsair Kindergarten ? Here is a picture showing how I painted the remaining 9 engine crankcase covers. One was used for the Ashmun Corsair, so it is missing from the line up.

I assembled all of the engines, and painted them along with the exhaust exits at the same time.

Since I was painting Flat Black and the air brush was loaded, I decide to paint the additional propellers from the 4 newly added Corsairs to the original group of 6. Here you can also see a pair of center flaps. I painted the top side Flat Black, and later they will be masked off for the walk way that is located in the lowest portion of the gull wing. You can also see the engine exhaust / intake parts too. Here again, one is missing, because it was used for the Ashmun Corsair.

This is the rear of the engine exhaust and intake manifold piping. Here again only 9 are present. One was used for the Ashmun Corsair that you can see in the background.

I was painting Flat Black, and this is the base color I used for these parts. Other details were hand painted on afterwards. So now these will be placed back into the collection of growing Corsair Kindergarten parts.

I had previously assembled the landing gear as part of the Corsair Kindergarten. All of the main gear and tail wheel struts were assembled. The main wheels were cleaned up and the tires were painted using RLM 66 to represent a Dark Gray tire color.

I did not paint the landing gear struts all at once, because these were in fact painted different colors on the full size Corsair. It depended on which version Corsair they were installed on, and how the aircraft was painted on the exterior, to determine the final colors. So I left the rest of them bare plastic for now.

Here you can see the additional 4 propellers, that were added to the original 6. There are also two engine crankcase faces. These were used on the Mayberry and Ashmun Corsairs.

The main wheel hubs were dirtied up and fake mud added to the inner rim to make it look more realistic.

I picked out two sets of main landing gear, and two tail wheel struts from the Kindergarten parts.

I painted them using Light Gray. This is the same color that will be used for the underside of the Corsairs. There are also two sets of outer spoked main wheel hubs. They were also painted this Light Gray color. They could have been painted in an Aluminum color too, but I decided to go this route. Either way is proper for a "Birdcage" Corsair. I also painted the undersides of the inboard and center flaps.

The tires were detailed and installed. I also wrapped the oleo struts using Ultra Bright Bare Metal Foil.

I installed the tail wheel doors. I did this prior to painting the underside Light Gray. I wanted to make sure I had a good bond on the plastic. Here you can see the home brewed "Salmon" color I mixed up and sprayed prior to closing the fuselage halves.

This area was stuffed with sponge material prior to painting. Once the paint dried, I removed the sponge masking, and did a little touch up with a brush. This is how it looked at this point.

As always, comments are encouraged.
Thanks for stopping by.

Some serious work done here, Louis @lgardner
The transluant green does look very nice.
Seems like you had to eat quite some icecreams prior the paint session of those engines.