Chance Vought-Maloney F4U-1 NX83782 (manufactured 1942)

There are several hangars with aircraft on display. Upon entering one finds himself in the giftshop and under that same room is the Edward T.Maloney hangar, the Pond hangar (with flyable aircraft) and the USS Enterise CV-6 hangar.
On the right are two other hangars: the Foreign hangar and the hangar for jet aircraft and air racers.
Opposite the main hangar is tyhe Friedkin Restoration hangar, with can be partly accessed. There is also a Fighter Rebuilder shop in which one can only take a peek. There is an open area which has a large selection of jet- and prop aircraft (sometimes only parts) plus vehicles.

Need some help here... The outside display which seems to resemble a dump, with various aircraft showing years of neglect, contain a few mysteries...

Some of these are hard to identify...
Top left is a ConvairLiner, N138CA CV440 c/n 63
Top right en Below left: Martin AM-1 Mauler 122403.
Below right is an unidentified DC-3 forward fuselage. For the answer read on...

Lawrence Safir came across it in 2006 and was able to photograph it from another angle.
Aad van der Voet of OldWings.nl suggested "..I would suggest N213MA c/n 7320.
This was reported at Chino in Aug99, Mar00 and in 2001 as a fuselage, bare metal, reportedly with MARC / Dave Tallichet. I think the cockpit section was first reported at Chino in 2003, so this appears to be a likely candidate."
"There are conficting reports about the whereabouts of this DC-3 after it disappeared from Herlong Field at Jacksonville in about 1993.
The DC-3 book (the Aug99 sighting was quoted from Air-Britain's DC-3 book) and Bob Ogden's books do indeed put it at the Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal,KS, but Joe Baugher reports it at Inyokern, CA...
I have another note (source unknown) which also says Inyokern, at one of Dave Tallichet's Specialty Restaurants!
This would tie in nicely with a later move to his compound at Chino. Perhaps it was at Inyokern for a short while only?
But it's all very vague... I would certainly appreciate some actual sightings for N213MA for the 1994-1999 period
Anyway, like I said, it still seems to be a likely candidate for your cockpit section, because it definitely was at Chino by Mar00 (with photoproof in 2001)."
Graham Robson is less hopeful: "I would doubt this DC-3 nose section is N213MA... When I photographed N213MA in Oct99 it was a complete fuselage, with nose cone and other airframe parts stored alongside, all intact, but dismantled. It was located in the back lot of Tallichet's MARC (Chino) compound, alongside the Bolingbroke airframes, Indian Ajeet jets and other bits and pieces, with the C-123 outside the hangar airside."
Graham added: "I have seen and photographed the DC-3 forward fuselage in your report in the Planes of Fame storage yard a couple of times, both times in and amongst many other airframe parts (which included the Convair and Mauler), these were at the time that N213MA was in Tallichet's yard...
These are two entirely separate and un-connected organisations."
AARGGHHH!!!

Unfortunately the museum itself is extremely difficult to reach and proved useless in this research.
After my visit I checked the website for contact details and found their 'web form' disabled, even  3 months after my visit. The curator (Ed Malone?)  has a part time job and the switchboard (giftshop) could not tell me his email adress...
I got thrown back to the telephone menu directory a few times; very frustrating when calling from overseas.
I tried to subscribe to the museum's webforum, but whatever name I tried it said such username was already in use. Obviously they don't want new members.
I hope they take better care of their planes than with the inquiries from the public...

Roger Syratt explored this wreck upon a recent visit and reported:
"Risking life and limb I climbed up on this relic (10Oct08) and managed to photograph one of the supplementary data plates, (the main plate had long since been removed), which stated that it is an R4D-6 with serial 50802.
Looking it up in the Air-Britain DC-3 book, I saw that BuNo 50802 c/n 26658 was an ex USN R4D-6. And that it was scrapped at Davis-Monthan in the early 1970s....
Would anyone care to comment please?"

Aad van der Voet did provide valuable comment:
"As for 50802's history, all I can add is that it was not broken up in the early 1970s, but rather in the late 1970s, or possibly even later.
It was bought from MASDC stocks by Allied Aircraft Sales Inc. on 09Jun75, and they usually kept their aircraft in their Tucson salvage yard for some time before scrapping them. It may even have been sold to another owner.
So... I too would like to know a bit more about what happened to it in the 1980s, and exactly when Ed Malonay acquired the nose section for his museum at Chino. That may have happened a lot later!
But at least now we know the identity of the Chino nose section!!!
BTW, for the record, like all R4D-6s, 50802 was redesignated as a C-47J on 18Sep62."

Jim Macy wrote me in Sep.2016: "I was stationed at NAS Johnsville, PA, 1959-61. NAS Johnsville was a support base for NADC, Naval Air Development Center. NADC worked on early space projects, anti-submarine, night time aerial photography and drone projects. In early 1959 NAS received R4D-6 50802 from AVCO in Nashville, TN. It had 2 rebuilt engines and props and a new paint job. Beautiful airplane. It had previously been in Antarctic operations. It had a nose cone with air to ground radar. Also were 2 large internal fuel tanks and skis. We removed the big tanks and installed seats. I was plane captain on 50802 for about a year and 4 months. Our job was to fly observation on NADC projects sometimes over the Atlantic. We took anti-sub sono-bouys to Key West regularly, they were prototypes for testing. We took Admirals and upper grade civilians to NAS Anacostia (Washington DC) or White Sands Proving Grounds. Then the next hop we would remove seats and haul a rebuilt engine in a can that would barely fit through the door! I had about 700 hours on 50802; most of that time my pilots were enlisted pilots, not many left in the Navy at that time.. I still have a copy of the plane captain test for a R4D-6 and my pocket note book with some flight times, crew member names, engine part numbers and often used gaskets. Thanks to your research and the photo of the data plate, I now know what happened to 50802. I always wondered. I would have liked to have had a photo of my plane but base security wouldn't allow it. A camera on base was a no-no. "Firing squad"... The dome on 50802 was like the one seen in the attached photo." -Jim Macy 9023 (23) Douglas R4D-6Q 'JMSDF' (c/n 16347); Kanoya/RJFY 16-01-14 [Link] See also www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/000151232.html

The above Lockheed Harpoon has no markings and I would like to know its identity... My own notes offered for a possibility: N6012, as a 2004 report had it as being 'white-washed', all markings removed... Is this the one: N6012 c/n 18-2256 ??? Peter Marson's excellent book The Lockheed Twins (Air-Britain, 2001) seem to support this with its remark 'Stored at Chino since Feb81, current'. Matt Cair wrote me in July 2008: "Those same Loadstars I have personally photographed many times at CNO. The all silver (bare metal) one, complete with stainless steel exhaust pipe covers, looks the same now as in the photo I took in 1985. Then, as now, there was no registration number on the aircraft. Sometime in the mid to late 1990s', this particular aircraft was purchaced (or leased) by a Nazi group, or organisation, and wore a Swastika on each rudder (have slide pix!) for a short time before they were removed... I photographed the camouflaged Loadstar (below) at LGB in the late 1980's, where it was stored before being ferried to CNO. At that time it was wearing a White with Blue & Red trim colors; and it had the remnants of a Lumber, or Lumber Supply, company name over the entry door."

Lockheed C-60A Lodestar with fictional AM 711 registration. It has c/n 2201.

It carried the following previous identities: 42-32181 XB-BOC XA-GEZ XA-GUH N4652V N668 CF-IAZ N3779G.
It too sits in a storage yard with many other aircraft in various stages of dilapidation and parked almost on top of each other.

0-23668 is Douglas C-47A Skytrain, registered as N60480. It has c/n 9530 and was also registered
at some point N7252N.

Bob Ogden's book North American Air Museums and Collections (Air-Britain, 2007), which I find an excellent reference, has the former USAF serial as 42-23688. FAA Registry has serial 42-23668, like my own database, and registered to Charles F.Nichols (Trustee) on 07Jan08.

An april 2017 update by Tim Chaloner shows N60480 repainted in WW2 colours: Photos by Friends & Guests, page 50.

See my April 2018 visit to the Yanks Air Museum!

The Road Goes On... back to US Southwest 2008