Hi, Matthew Burchette, and this is Behind the Wings. We have come all the way from
Denver, Colorado to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.
Otherwise known as the ninth circle of hell. It's hot out here!
But you know what? For you guys, we are going to brave the heat, and we are going to
see some really cool stuff today. Come on.
So we've trekked through the ninth level of hell. It's about a 190 degrees
out here in Arizona. And I'm with James Stemm, who's the director of
collections here at Pima. And our trek has been not for naught, because here we
are in this awesome hangar. James, what actually goes on back here?
This is our restoration hangar, where we rebuild and repaint and do all that kind of stuff to airplanes.
So, literally behind the wings.
Yes, absolutely.
So I'm a little bit partial to the P-40. Can we go look at that?
We can go look at the P-40.
Alright.
Alright, so the P-40 was built by Curtiss, and, by the end of World War II,
they had built over 13,000 of them, all from their plant in Buffalo, New York.
Now a lot of you guys are probably thinking, "That plane looks pretty
familiar." Well, duh, we're talking AVG, American Volunteer Group,
or the Flying Tigers. And you probably remember the big, giant, shark mouth.
Well, what you may not know: it was the third most produced aircraft by the
Allies, right behind the P-51 and the P-47. How cool is that?
Now, one thing I don't know is what model is this?
This is a P-40E, which was the first really combat
capable version that the U.S. had at the first two years of the war. We went from
four 50 caliber guns to six, and we moved two of the guns out of the nose into the wings.
Awesome! I noticed it's got some pretty cool nose art on it.
Was this the actual plane that carried that, or did you guys just decide,
"Let's see what we can find out."
Since this one is made up of parts of many aircraft,
we went looking in the history of that fighter group to find something
interesting to you represent. And we found a pilot who was born and raised in
Arizona. Lived here his entire life, he was the quarterback for the University
of Arizona, in college. And then he went into the Air Force, but just before World
War II. Went to the Pacific, flew there for several years and then actually
ended the war flying Mustangs in Europe.
Oh, wow! So this thing looks gorgeous on the outside,
is the cockpit just as gorgeous?
The cockpit is pretty much complete.
Can we get in it?
Yes, we can go see the cockpit. Yes!
I love this show! Let's go check it.
[airplane noises]
Alright, you can stop playing.
Sorry. How can you not?
Alright, so obviously I'm in the cockpit of the P-40,
and it is like amazingly complete. This is really cool!
It is.
So, it obviously didn't come like this.
This airplane came from Australia.
Okay.
And there are large stocks of stuff from World War II all over
Australia and the South Pacific.
I know where I'm going. No kidding. So it's literally, they just
start searching and find a crate here and find a crate there?
Go out in the jungle or recover from old airfields.
Or a lot of people just saved the stuff.
So now is this an American one?
No, this one was actually built for the British, which is why it's
painted in British camouflage colors. It was bought and paid for by the
British and shipped to Australia for them to use. But, once it got there, the
Americans were so short of airplanes that they repossessed a whole bunch of
P-40s to sign them to the American 49th Fighter Group.
You know what, that makes sense,
because, I don't know if you can see it, but this is actually called a
Sutton harness, and it's the British seatbelt. The Americans didn't use this thing,
and I was kind of wondering why that was in here. But now it makes perfect sense.
Yep, that's why.
As cool as this is and as much as you're going to have to pry me out of here,
is there anything else in here that's kind of...
There is! Parked over next to this is one of the airplanes that this fought against.
Is that what I think it is?
Yeah, it probably is.
Okay, so even though this is an episode on the P-40,
this is too good to pass up. BAM! That's an Me-109F. How cool is that?
We got to see more of this! James, can we like...
Let's do that.
Yeah, oh my gosh this is amazing! Now, are there original
parts on this, obviously other than the engine and all that kind of stuff.
Most of the parts you see here are from multiple wrecks. But there are parts of the original
aircraft here in the fuselage and a little bit in the wings.
So what's even more amazing is that you know who flew this plane.
We do. It was flown by a man named Theodore Weissenberger,
who was the 13th highest-scoring ace ever. He shot
down 213 aircraft, mostly in 109s, but also in BF-110s and ME-262s.
And so, let's see, you found this in
In Finland.
Finland. So JG-?
JG-5.
JG-5, okay. I mean, just to be able to touch history like that.
It's an excellent airplane.
Okay, I will look down.
Do you not? Do you not?
Back up. Take two.
Man, this this is a great capper to an awesome episode.
Thank you so much for showing us around.
This has been really cool.
Happy to do it.