WIX Archives

Re: Great Barrier Reef Wrecks

Posted by Richard Allnutt on Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:12:21 AM

In reply top Re: Great Barrier Reef Wrecks posted by Graham ODriscoll on Thu Oct 17, 2002 07:04:49 AM

Yes, the airframes were badly corroded, but a lot of the hard to make parts, such as the forgings and steel components were in excellent shape. There were three Royal Navy corsairs recovered, and the tail section of a firefly. Basically what was recovered of the corsairs were the center sections from roughly behind station 186 to the engine. One of the aircraft was completely stripped to its components, and the main spar was sent to California for re-sale. They wanted $45k for it, but, to be honest, it would have needed a lot of work to be restored, and probably had too much damage to the spar caps to be salvageable for airworthy uses. Other parts of this aircraft were supposed to have gone to Jerry Yagen, and Nelson Ezell. Of the other two corsairs, one had the spars sawn off, just outside the fuselage. I remember seeing a photograph of this in store at Polk City in Warbirds Worldwide a few years ago. The third airframe is with Craig McBurney, and he's using it in his rebuild of the former Erickson -4 Corsair. I spoke with Craig some months ago, and he said that the steel components were nearly all in excellent condition, as were many of the forgings. I have seen many of these parts myself, both before, and after restoration, and yes, they are in excellent condition, visually at any rate. Still, it does require a lot of work to clean and prepare these components, and that may be prohibitive in the case of the corsair, since there are at least some NOS stocks for this aircraft yet available. Would have been nice to see a Barracuda come up, now, wouldn't it! Anyway, just thought you should know that these recoveries were not a total wash-out.

Cheers,
Richard

: Having just returned from a bit of 'swimming wiv da fishes
: ' in the Coral Sea, I couldnt believe how salty the water
: was, so it's no wonder the stuff is now corroded junk...!!
:
:
:
:
: : Thanks Rob,
: :
: : I agree, so we can file this one under the section:
: :
: : would have been nice but alas.
: :
: : Next!
: :
: : Cees

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