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Post by EXO on Apr 15, 2009 21:39:56 GMT 8
Any ideas what sort of aircraft these paratroopers are resting under?
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Post by okla on Apr 15, 2009 23:13:08 GMT 8
this is a "toughie". it appears to me that the troopers are lying under the end of the portside wing of some kind of amphibious aircraft. that other "thing", i dont believe is part of the airplane that the men are using for shade or whatever. the object directly above the guys would appear to be a small pontoon that usually is near the wingtips of catapault type planes jetisoned from cruisers or battleships. could that odd looking contraption with the guy standing upright possibly be a glider or maybe one that is partially disassembled????do you know where this photo was taken????are these troops the corregidor jumpers or european theatre people????i swear that the insignia on that "glider" wants to be british as appears on the wings of RAF planes. i am probably making erroneous assumptions, but i cant think of anything else that could fill the bill.
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Post by one50 on Apr 16, 2009 8:28:17 GMT 8
It looks like a "Supermarine-Walrus". A British single-engine amphibious biplane. These were used by the Royal Australian Air Force. I think this photo and the other photo were taken around late 1943 early 1944. That would put the 503rd in New Guinea....correct? I have this set of phots too so I can see them in really good detail This photo is of 2 planes like Okla mentions. Also look at the shadow on the ground...the wings do not connect. Dan
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Post by EXO on Apr 16, 2009 10:39:15 GMT 8
Dan, As you have a set of these photos too, would you like to write some captions for a bunch of them? Chet Nycum and I have cooperated on many already, and I have just finished re-editing the series navigation so that other browsers will show the same page details. Back in the days when it was just Internet Explorer, I could create a page using FrontPage and pretty much rely on it turning out looking the same. But now we also have Firefox, and more recently Google Chrome - which initially I didn't like, but now it is my browser of choice (so much faster). The downside was that many navigation feature - particularly the wingding fonts, the direction triangles in particular, would not reproduce in other browers. So I have had to create graphic based buttons, and redo the series of pages affected. Well, if it wasn't boring enough the first time, it sure gets boring doing it again! The series commences at:
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Post by mgk1951 on Apr 16, 2009 18:36:49 GMT 8
Hi Yes, the aircraft in the background is a Supermarine Walrus with RAAF markings on the fuselage. The aircraft the paratroopers are resting under is again a Walrus. The Walrus was a amphibian biplane made by the Supermarine Aviation Works Ltd., in Southampton England and is a distant cousin to the Supermarine Spitfire. Twenty four of these aircraft were ordered by the Royal Australian Navy in 1933 for use with RAN cruisers as spotter aircraft. These aircraft were designated Seagull V. A further thirty seven were ordered in 1938 for delivery to the Royal Australian Air Force. Most of the RAAF Walrus aircraft appear to have rotated to the RAN, however a few served with the RAAF in New Guinea and Admiralty Islands on spotter-reconnaissance as well as air sea rescue missions. It is a rare occurrence to have two RAAF Walrus aircraft photographed together made even more interesting by the presence of US paratroopers. The link below is to a photographic article on a surviving RAAF Walrus at Point Cook, Victoria. www.thescale.info/news/publish/Supermarine-Walrus.shtmlRegards mgk1951
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Post by batteryboy on Apr 16, 2009 19:51:01 GMT 8
I concur, its a Walrus
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