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Re: Cavalier Mustangs

Posted by Randy Haskin on Sun Dec 28, 2003 06:52:25 AM

In reply top Re: Cavalier Mustangs posted by Jeff on Sun Dec 28, 2003 12:43:50 AM

"any idea what happened to them?"

No, and chances are nobody will ever know.

One of the "problems" of the TFA/Cavalier story as far as aircraft historians are concerned is how they did business. When they purchased up Mustangs of all types, the airframes were all broken down into components and put into a "stock" of parts, with no regard being given to airframe historical identity. Complicating things even more is that they process they used to strip and preserve the componenets many times damaged or destroyed the plastic/phenolic ID plates on those pieces.

I have spoken with Dave Lindsay's sons about this pretty extensively. Their argument is that it's impossible to really track down every airframe that went "into" Cavalier and match it up with an airframe that came out the other end. Yes, many of the airplanes that were "remanufacturered" popped out the door with a USAAF and NAA identification number attached to the paperwork, but it's completely impossible to know how much of that original metal -- if any -- was actually in that aircraft. The ID numbers were attached to the airframes because they were required to by the FAA, and not to maintain any historical significance to that airframe. I have heard of restorations of Cavalier airplanes where people have said "the fuselage showed some Bolivian markings, the tail was Canadian, and the left wing was off an Australian Mustang."

By my current count (and this constantly changes), there are about 15 airframes that I know of that sort of "disappeared" into the Cavalier black hole. That is, they were purchased up and the ID numbers were never attached to any paperwork that came out the other end. Those Aussie airplanes are all part of those unknown 15.

Remember that Cavalier produced about 20 (17-23, depending on how you cut it) airplanes that had *no* historical ID, but new 67-XXXX 68-XXXX 69-XXXX and 72-XXXX id numbers.

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