Surviving Artifacts
from
Kingman Army Air Field:
& Sales-Storage Depot No.41
Planes:
- THE SUPPLY HANGAR -
(currently under construction)
Considering that, out of some 5500 USAAF
planes at Kingman, there may not have been even a dozen Warhawks...
... What, then, are the odds the
Depot 41 Museum Collection
would end up with the
Pilot's Instrument Panel
from X-894 in the image above?...
Not yet having been extracted from
the Curtiss fighter, that very Panel can be
seen behind the N-3 series Gunsight
in this 1947 close-up:
Electronic
pattern
projected in
the pilot's
line of sight
by an N-3C:
Photo Above:
Post seen on the cowling ahead of the windscreen is the auxiliary Bead Sight
For some reason, this particular
Warhawk captured Bill Larkins' special attention, because along with two
side portraits he also shot her
data block stenciled below the cockpit:
LUKE FIELD is discernable, but there's some question as to whether the letter preceding
"P-40 R" is the remnants of a T or R.
Because of the irregular spacing, whatever was there seems to have been applied sometime after the original lettering.
Further, the meaning of the large,
brush-applied S or 5 above the block is
yet another mystery...
According to its Aircraft Record Card,
P-40R #41-13682 was delivered as a P-40F
in March of 1942 (coincidentally the very
same month the U.S. Army Air Forces
officially became an autonomous command, having been renamed from the former
U.S. Army Air Corps nearly 9 months before
in June of 1941).
P-40F Warhawks were to receive the Packard Rolls-Royce V-1650-1 engine, but
that exceptional powerplant was never produced in sufficient numbers, so those
Fs built with the standard Allison V-1710s
were reassigned the R suffix.
Additional Record Card data on
P-40R #41-13682
- originally assigned to the
20th Pursuit Group
- 3-20-43 suffered a left gear collapse upon landing at Northern Field, Tullahoma TN
with 2nd Lt. Loren A. Delp
clutching the controls
- 12-43 to Luke Field, AZ and
eventually redesignated RP-40R
(R for "restricted use")
- 10-24-45 declared surplus and assigned to Kingman for disposal; flew the short hop
from Luke Field near Phoenix to
Sales-Storage Depot No.41
...Now, the next time you watch the 1943 movie A GUY NAMED JOE, please pay close attention during the Luke Field scenes and
see if you can find X-894 for me!
photo credits this Page:
William T. Larkins,
Depot 41 Photo Archive