WIX Archives

Re: Shangri-la

Posted by Lynn Ritger on Sun Oct 21, 2001 07:15:49 PM

In reply top Shangri-la posted by Tom Woodhouse on Sat Oct 20, 2001 10:35:41 AM

A friend of mine, aviation artist Wade Meyers, has done an extremely thorough investigation of VF-T's history as well as other aircraft flown by Don Gentile, and interviews with line chiefs and other notable 4th personnel at the reunion a couple of weeks ago at Savannah, GA determined that the airframe was stripped of all usable items (Don wound up with several of the instruments from the bird, somehow, and these are now with the USAFM) and the stripped hulk was evidently dumped in a ravine somewhere around the perimter of the field. Before you get excited about this, that area was later used for training for police dogs, and the resultant excrement from the dogs was dumped in the aformentioned ravine as well... yeeechhh! No one seems to have found anything to this point, but if you don't mind rooting around in 30 year old dog poo, then perhaps that pot'o'gold is there after all...

Also, it wasn't that he got carried away during the flypast, he just misjudged it...granted, he shouldn't have done it in any case, but he made only one pass, and that ended at the slight rise in the middle of the field which he did not adequately compensate for. Whoops.

Interestingly, according to Wade's research into Gentile's flight log (of which he graciously forwarded me a copy), he only flew VF-T about 16 times total...she seemed to be downed for maintenance fairly frequently, and he got most of his kills in VF-N (if memory serves correctly, I'll check later tonight or tomorrow). Fascinating stuff.

Lynn


: Does anybody know if there has been a search for Gentile's
: P51B Shangri-la which he managed to crash whilst getting
: rather carried away doing a low level beat up for the pres
: s at Debden. It was meant to have been bulldozed into a fa
: rmers pond after the prang. Should I dust off the metal de
: tector?

Follow Ups: