• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Researching Aircraft History one small piece at a time

O

O-1Driver

Charter Member 2011
View attachment 21341View attachment 21342I have spent quite a bit of time the past several months piecing together the military history of my 1943 L-4B. I have the Piper records of manufacture where it was rolled out from the factory on 2/2/43 and the AAF Bill of Sale when they sold the aircraft to the first civilian owner 1/23/1945.

I just received a copy of the AAF aircraft card and the only state side entry it had on it was it's shipment to Camp Roberts, California and assignment to US Army Ground Forces on 2 March, 1943.

Part of the mystery surrounding the shipment to Camp Roberts is that Camp Roberts did not have an airfield until after WW II. The base was a training/staging center. The aircraft was not based at Camp Roberts but simply passed thru for further deployment.

It is going to take more research and digging to find out where it went from Camp Roberts and where it was between March of 1943 and January of 1945. Researching these old WW II aircraft is a large part of the fun of owning one.


EDIT: A friend sent me some additional information about new Field Artilllery Battalions that were activated at camp Roberts during 1943. The new Units were staffed and equipped while at Camp Roberts and then deployed. Each Field Artillery Battalion was equipped with six piper L-4 aircraft.
SteveView attachment 21328
 
That sounds great Steve, I think if your going to own an old wartime bird its part of having one that you know what it went through before it got in your hands, i would be the same. I think its a great idea although i'm guessing it'll be a lengthy one too.

Let us know how it goes mate and good luck.

Dave
 
Pretty Cool Steve. What would be really cool is if you were able to talk to one of the AAF pilots that used the plane.
Stay after this and let us know.

flyer01
 
You got me curious with your history, I was wondering if the L4 had been modified from the civilian version to break down easily for shipping and reassembly in the field. I came across this in Wikipedia which I found interesting (I think that I recall you mentioning this in a previous post):

In Europe, the final dogfight of WWII occurred between an L-4 and a German Fiesler Fi 156 Storch. The pilot and co-pilot of the L-4, Lts. Duane Francis and Bill Martin, opened fire on the Storch with their .45 caliber pistols, forcing the German air crew to land and surrender.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top