Interesting items found by airplane restorers

Air & Space Smithsonian has a feature on the unusual and telling items that antique airplane restorers at places like the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility often find when disassembling their latest aircraft.

Last July, intern Eric Lawrence was cleaning out a Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk, a small, airship-based fighter that the Navy used in the 1930s for reconnaissance patrols along the U.S. coasts. When he was working in the fuselage tail cone, Lawrence came across a broken pencil, inscribed with the words "Hoover for President, 1928..."

A small medallion–discovered tightly crumpled around a screw in a World War II British Hawker Hurricane Mk.IIC fighter–also ended up teasing the restorers with possible storylines. Museum Specialist Will Lee, who found the medal while working on the Hawker restoration, took the time to straighten it out, make it recognizable, and do some investigating. "It's actually a watch fob," says Lee. In the course of researching the item, Lee learned the meaning of the medallion's icons: "The anchor symbol means it was made in Birmingham, England. The lion indicates that it's made of silver, and the letter corresponds to a date–in this case, 1915." But who had owned the medallion? A pilot? A maintainer? A person of wealth? And why was it wrapped around a screw?

Link

• [arkizzle]

  it was not delicious

  Thanks Sonny, I laughed :)

• [tsteele999]

  I worked on Air Force cargo jets in the early ’90s, at that time the aircraft were mostly 25 or more years old (C-141B).

  As an instrument tech, we had to crawl all over places where no one often went, under the floors, up in the T-tail, in the wing roots.

  There was tons of junk rattling around in these areas, cut-off connectors, safety wire, dropped pens and pencils. All of our tools were accounted for and if a tool was missing it would ground the aircraft, but un-inventoried items often got left behind.

  I remember thinking that it was a good thing the planes couldn’t do barrel rolls or all the junk would fall out.

  My one great find was a D-cell maglight that was a “lost tool” for 2 weeks until I found it rattling between the ribs above the cargo door. I still have it.

  At the top of the T-tail most techs would sign their name and leave some graffiti. No one saw it but us.

  Sadly, most of the planes are coke cans now.

• [cstatman]

  so cool. when the world was still exciting, everything was a little customized, and the place wasn’t so sterile.

  no one will say “wow, look what we found” when restoring a 1995 4 door honda civic

• [silkox]

  In the movie Dr. Strangelove, the bomber crew had all these juicy fruit gum packs. Does anyone know what that was all about? Interesting that the picture includes a Jf wrapper….

• [travelina]

  Oooh! I love the Paul E. Garber Facility! Too bad they closed it to the public. You can take a virtual tour here:
  http://www.aviation-history.com/garber/vgarb.html

• [cha0tic]

  In a couple of the houses we were in, when I was younger, whenever we decorated and stripped the walls, my dad always got us to write our names and the date on the plaster in pencil. I’ve often wondered if anyone has ever found those and wondered about the previous occupants of the house.

• [Takuan]

  Dear Dr. Hypercube

  Japanese children use alphabet characters to draw faces
  http://www.silverspace.net/ray/face.kana.jpg

  have you tried?

• [stratojoe]

  About that 1995 civic – you find interesting things in old cars, too. Out of the front seat of a 1949 ford I pulled out about 3 dozen bobby pins, a couple of plastic butterflies, a rifle shell, some wheat pennies, scraps of paper, a little polaroid print coating vial.. and from the heater, the ubiquitous juicy fruit wrapper. I’ve heard other stories of people finding beer, knives and even firearms in old cars.

• [dr.hypercube]

  Another good aircraft restoration find here. Found during work on an Aichi Seiran – a small float plane based on (in?) Japanese submarine aircraft carriers. This scratch engraving is my favorite.

• [dr.hypercube]

  @#8 Takuan – I’d never seen that before – very cool. It would be funny to do with kanji – making pictures out of ideo(picture)grams!

• [Takuan]

  it’s quite old. You should show that plate to a Japanese person of at least sixty, see how they decrypt it. It could just be a line drawing.

• [Takuan]

  here’s an article
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henohenomoheji

• [toxonix]

  You had me at ‘airship-based fighter’.
  drooool.
  The Akron was maybe the coolest flying ship ever built.

• [EdT.]

  Interesting story, but it’s a shame they don’t have more pictures. :-(

• [sonny p fontaine]

  this is the best part of restoration work. piecing together clues about the person who had once occupied the space that you now exist in. my last greatest find was a mess of nabisco labels that had apparently been swept into a hole in the floor sometime around 1905. i also found a ginger snap. it was not delicious.

• [Wulf]

  “ICONS”? That they’re called hallmarks is something that any reasonably educated person ought to know. And Mr. Lee is a Museum Specialist (whatever that might be). Or could it be the Smithsonian that calls them “icons”? That would be even sadder.

• [sonny p fontaine]

  “Sadly, most of the planes are coke cans now.”
  this statement holds immense weight and validity.
  thank you TSTEELE999