As you know, I love this bent wing bird and of course I love warbirds. But we Germans are quite strange to handle with history, especially with our own history.

So I am strange too (its helpful if you are a moderator of a forum  so I am in Germany at the famous warbirdforum) . I love warbirds, but I wont build a warbird wich was in war action. You will never find a warbird in my hangar which was pilotetd by an ace or so ..... yes Im strange I know. So was my Focke-Wulf a prototype-nightfighter, my Mustang a Swiss one and so on.

Okay ..... the Corsair ! As you can see on my homepage, i am a Corsair fan, and so it was clear that I will build a Corsair. My choice fell to a full-fibre Corsair, Scale 1/5,5, powered by Zenoah62. It was difficult to find an original Corsair without bloody history. The racers are beautiful (Bendix Trophy) but the most beautiful of them "The Lucky Gallon" was reserverd for a wingman. The "Quantico" Corsair was an AU-1 (mine should bei a F4U) and so I tripped over the barely unknown "Olathe" Corsair. Heres the story of those (believed) 5 ships.

here we go ....

The Olathe Corsairs. There are not many pictures of this bird, it was not easy to find the story, and there exists no dokument or picture of an Olathe Corsair in flight, but there exists a good profile/3-view. Its from a Hasegawa plastic kit :

This No5 hat the serial number 97286. The No5 was on service at the "Naval Air Reserve Training" (NART) Olathe, Kansas. Also known ist the No11 (Serial 97264), this ship still exists in flying condition, later more about the No11. Something to discuss is also the camouflage of those birds. Glossy Sea Blue over all did also exist. I dont like the boaring blue Corsairs. Every Corsair is blue and those birds are not good visible in the sky as you dont know exactly if you see the bottom of the plane or the upper side. But there are those No5 and No11. Painted in gullgrey (FS36440) over white, with that beautiful orange ribbon over the fuselage.

This "New Navy Camouflage" , also seen at the Quantico-Corsairs, is high visible and of course something special. The blue outer wings, the rudders in blue and the bright orange is something special. Enough special to me    It is believed, that those blue parts are spare parts from other Corsairs. There were only 5 ships, and so it was no use to paint those spareparts in the new sheme. Strange looking, but beautiful in the air; and the best of all, you can allways recognize how the bird flies in the air. That is a good thing for an old moderator of a forum

The Olathe-Corsairs are late F4U-4 Corsairs, but the history of them is not clear. There are only a few papers of the Navy abaout those birds at the NART Olathe, the inventory-list is not complete (strange thing for us Germans, cause here is everything exactly listed from aircraft to toiletpaper, everything) . But if you collect all those pictures spinning around in the WWW you have a good basis to tell the story, and of course to build a flying model. The paintsheme is believed to be painted in the year 1956.

Heres a blue one

and here again the No5 (No5 lives )

"My No.5" was parked for several years at "Depot Lichtfeld Park NAS Aizona" until the year 1959 

In the year 1959, Mr. Robert Bean saw those Corsairs burning in the Arizona desert an bought No5 and 21 other Corsairs. He planned to restore the ships to airworthy condition and to sell the fighters to Honduras. The plan works only at 9 aircraft. Those Honduras-Corsairs fighted in the so called "Soccer-war", also a very interesting story ! If you want, i can tell this story too.

No.5 was not sold to Honduras. No5 got the civil registration N5215V and was ferried to Blythe /California. The Aircraft remained in Blythe until the year 1972, was sold and ferried to Los Angeles. Now the No.5 was in a bad condition, cause after 13 years standing in the rain and weathers the bird was really tired.  The man of the hour was Mr. Gustafson. Mr.Gustafson restored the aircraft into airworthy condition, and the beautiful fighter had his second maiden flight in the August of 1973. Painted "glossy sea blue overall"

14 years later, 1987, the fighter was sold to Mr.Jones/Minnesota. But only one year later, the aircraft was again sold to Kermit Weeks (Weeks Air Museum).   

In the Year 1992, the hurricane Andrew fell over the museum and the aircraft was heavily damaged. After repairing the bent-wing-bird into "static-Display-Conditions", the plane was placed in the "Fantasy of Flight Museum" in Polk-City (Florida). No it is painted as "Angel of Okinawa" ......  

No5 lives ! Not airworthy anymore, but in best condition in a museum.

That is the story of the Olathe Corsair No.5 and this is my fighter airborne on short final last week  

The story of No.11 is better known  ....

Ther serial of that bird is 97264 an it was delivered to the USN in Octobre 1945. From 1945 to 1948 the fighter was stored in a depot. Between 1948 and 1950 there is a gap. Nobody knows what happened in this time. In January 1950 the Corsair appeared at the VMF-223. The 97264 was used in this squad until July 1950, again a gap for 3 month, and then flying at the VMF-225. In January 1952 ferried to the VMF-211, used until April 1952, again ferried to VMA-332 and after 4 months general overhaul. After the overhaul the aircraft was delivered in July 1953 to NART St.Louis /Missouri. In July 1955 BueNo 97264 retired ..... only for a few months. In October 1955 BueNo97264 was reactivated and ferried to the NART Olathe. Here the fighter got the No.11 and the same paintsheme as No.5. The fighter was in service until June 1956 and retired after 11 years flying.

No.11 was also ferried to "Lichtfield Park NAS Arizona" and stands in the desert among hundreds other Corsairs. The same story as No.5 , No11 was not sold to Honduras and in the seventies Bob Bean sold the aircraft after glowing in the desert for about 17 years !  

In the year 1973 the bird was sold to the "Pacific War Museum" , and after 4 years Eugene Akers bought the fighter in 1977. It was the second Corsair in the hands of Eugene Akers (the first was his raceplane Serial 97259, sold 1974). The Corsair No.11 was stored at the hangar belonging to William Barnes. At this time time Barnes was the owner of another Corsair, the Serial 97259. The deal was to restore the No.11 to airworthy conditions. But Barnes died 1984 by crashing his own P-51 fighter.

In the same year appeared Charles Hall. Hall made a deal with Akers. Hall wanted to restore the bird by getting a 50% partnership. After that deal No.11 was ferried to Charles Hall. In the year 1991 Akers sold his 50% to Cecil Harp and in February 1992 the bird took his second maiden flight ! Hall and harp flew the bird for about 4 years.

After this time, the aircraft was sold to Christophe Jaquard/France. Jaquard is a warbird enthusiast and in his collection there is a Flugwerk Fw190, a Griffon Spitfire and so on. The new Reg was F-AZVJ

As I know, No.11 was again sold to finance the FockeWulf project and the aircraft was ferried back to the USA.

So Folks, this was the story of two Corsairs, the last ones of so many.

I hope it was a bit interesting for you and of course "keep em flying" !