 This is a picture of the Thunderbird (TB) in earlier days. |
 The data on the fuselage. |
 The first time I saw the TB. |
 Preparing to fly it home. |
 Taxing out. |
 At the home field. |
 The panel. |
 After test flying the TB, I decided it was not a safe aircraft. I moved it to a private field owned by a friend. My intent was to disassemble it and rebuild it as a Ki27. This was to be the Thunderbird’s last landing. |
 It was the last landing! |
 The TB did not suffer severe damage in the “last landing”. The prop was damaged most. |
 The left wing tip was damaged a bit, too. |
 Taking it apart. |
 The wings came from a BT-13 and were sold at this point. |
 The cowl was OK, but the spinner was a loss. |
 The TB is now back in my shop. |
 More parts have been removed. |
 As I removed the skin, evidence of old damage and shoddy repair work becomes evident. |
 The circles show cracks in the fuselage that were old and rusted. These areas were not visible when the aircraft was inspected at the time pf purchase. |
 This shows an old weld. It was a very bad weld. It appears to have been done with a wire feed welder. |
 An old crack in a bad place. This is where the engine mount connects to the fuselage. |
 The place where the landing gear box meets the fuselage should have had a gusset. You can see that the box acted like a shear on the longeron tube. This crack goes about ¾ of the way around the tube. It was rusted, suggesting some age. |
 The same crack viewed from the opposite side. |
 The same view from farther away. |
 This is the damage that caused the crash. This is the longeron on the left side of the aircraft. It sheared completely on the “Last Landing”. This caused the floorboards to heave, which broke the right brake cylinder and caused a ground loop when I applied the brakes. |
 The same longeron forward of the landing gear box. |
 Old cracks under the right engine mount attach point. |
 The damage from farther away. Scary! |
 Another old crack that has been made worse by the crash. |
 The TB has been moved to one of my two partners’ shop (Cliff). This is where the rebuild will occur. |
 Legs attached before removing the gear. |
 The damaged engine mount attach area has been cut away. |
 More disassembly. |
 The back of the aircraft. This was a well-built fuselage. Gid Townsend was an excellent welder. He also built the fuselage like a tank. It was very strong. The horizontal stab trimmed with a screw like a piper. But the screw must have come off a B-52. It was really big! I think the aircraft was damaged by one of the owners between Townsend and myself. The repairs were not well done. |
 Here my other partner, Norm, is taking more skin off the aircraft. |
 Norm does good work. |
 It looks like something Sikorski built in the 1930s. |
 More damage was found as we inspected the parts as we removed them. |
 A close up of the right engine mount attach point. |
 This is an old crack that was waiting to hurt someone. |
 This was an old crack that someone attempted to fix with some really bad welding. |
 This is the underside of that wire feed weld. Think he used enough wire? |
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