By ANN Warbird Columnist Tom Griffith

Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) in Galveston (TX) is the long-time home of a Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer. This plane is basically a B-24 Liberator with an extended fuselage and most noticeably, a single, very TALL vertical tail. The example at LSFM has been the unofficial “door greeter” when one transitions from the museum’s lobby/gift shop area to the first hangar. 

Relatively no-so-exciting and not-so-famous when compared to the museum’s beautiful B-17, P-38, F4U, P-47 and PBJ (to name a few), the Privateer is nonetheless a bonafide Warbird. The Privateer contributed to the defeat of the Japanese Navy in WWII and this earns the ‘bird a place in history. As already stated, it has a very tall vertical tail – its tip is 30 ft 1 in above the ground - according to a reference that I checked. This means that it towers over 10 feet higher than the vertical tail of the B-17-G Thunder Bird, with which it shares a hangar.

I made the trip to Galveston especially to see how the museum staff is coming with its restoration of the Privateer and rebuild of the SBD Dauntless (more on that later).

A GREAT crew...

I need to thank the entire staff at LSFM, but special thanks go out to two guys: To the technician who’s doing the electrical work on the PB4Y (just one of the museum projects he’s on, but obviously the biggest and most extensive) – Paul Johnson, A&P/AI. Paul is a private pilot as well. The second special gentleman is Bill Jolliffe – he’s a volunteer at LSFM, who, besides being a great guy and source of information on the Privateer, is a WWII combat veteran with thousands of hours in Privateers. He provided not only technical and historical information on the Privateer, but he told a number of stories of his exploits in the venerable warbird. To say the least, this reporter was in awe – Bill and his generation of WWII vets are easily Tom Griffith’s heroes!

But, I digress…

While the PB4Y-2 did participate in WWII, this particular example, Bu. No. 59819, didn’t have much of a chance to do so, as it was delivered to the USN in June, 1945, just before the end of the war. After serving the USN till 1957, this plane was demilitarized and became a firebomber based in Arizona, in 1959. 

The LSFM acquired this plane in 1991, and has gone sometimes for over a year at a time with no noticeable work being done on it. This has changed in the last year or so, and work is ongoing to get her flying again. When the restoration is completed, the biggest difference between her equipment when built in 1945 and when restored, will be in the engines: the original had four Pratt & Whitney R-1830s (unlike those on its USAAF counterpart, turbochargers were deleted) and the museum is restoring her with Wright R-2600s, the engines that powered her as a firebomber. 

The original R-1830s were not turbocharged because the plane never expected to get above 9,000 feet – for the same reason, Privateers, unlike Liberators, had no oxygen system. I learned that to recertify the plane with R-1830s would add to the time and expense of getting her airworthy again, so the LSFM is proceeding with keeping R-2600s for power. The bigger engines provide approximately 1,200 more TOTAL horsepower for only a little more overall weight – nothing wrong with more power!

Getting close is half the fun.

My “tour” of the big bomber began with my climbing up onto a scaffold, underneath the port wing and up into the wheelwell for the main gear. Paul had me look towards the wingtip down a sort of tunnel through the wing ribs. He and others had been crawling inside of these very long wings (actually, the plane has only ONE wing and it goes from tip to tip, through the fuselage of the plane, but more on that later) to check for corrosion. Next, after climbing down from there, I climbed up and into the tail end of the long fuselage and with Paul as my guide, I was given a very thorough tour of the inside of this monster.

I’ll note right here that a number of visitors to the museum wondered who the lucky guy with the cameras was – the other visitors were behind the ropes and saw signs that said: “Please do not touch the planes,” and I was climbing IN and ONTO one of them!

Walking the length of the fuselage was similar to walking in the attic of a house – instead of rafters to step on, avoiding stepping between and onto the ceiling, one has to walk on the tops of the bulkheads where no flooring was present, lest one step onto the thin aluminum skin that made up the underside of the fuselage. (Speaking of “thin aluminum skin,” the gang in the front office of ANN wondered about the thickness of the skin on this warbird – Valarie Barak at LSFM sent me a number of faxes that pertained to the wing skin alone, and depending on where you are on the wing, the skin varies from 0.020 inches to 0.128 inches thick.) The Plating Diagram for the wing is more complex than probably an entire Cessna 150 aircraft! 

Back to the tour - in front of the two bomb bays, the plane becomes two-stories (well, kinda!). The flight deck makes up the top floor, and underneath, one crawls along a walkway to the very front where the nose turret is installed. After checking out everything there, we exited the fuselage through the nose wheel opening. Bill told me that this was the point of exit for the nose-gunner if they had to bail out. Note: for such a big plane, the fuselage is VERY close to the pavement – crawling out through this opening is best left to young, limber people!

How did they DO it?

One thing is apparent from the inside: there must be miles of control cables, wires, hoses and tubing. I’m always taken aback to realize that during WWII, TENS of thousands of B-17s, B-24s and B-29s – our big bombers – were built in about 3 years. This doesn’t even include all of the smaller bombers, fighters, cargo planes, spotters, trainers, etc.

Once inside, there's a lot of 'inside!'

Back to the Privateer, if exploring the inside was a treat, I’m nearly at a loss for words (well, relatively at a loss for words!) to describe what it was like to climb out through one of the turret openings onto the fuselage and wings of the big bomber! Aside from getting a great view of the top of the P-38, SBD, and a better view of the B-17, I got to see and walk the length of the famous Davis wing. 

As Bill pointed out later, the wing, with its Fowler flaps, makes it possible for the rather ungainly fuselage and enormous tail to leave the earth. Aside from the fact that the leading edges and wingtips were missing, the beauty of the Davis wing was hard to appreciate while trekking from the fuselage to one end and then to the other. This wing is made to be viewed from the ground when the bomber performs a flyover, and we should all be able to enjoy it from the ground in a couple of years (if everything goes according to schedule). 

As mentioned earlier I was surprised and amazed to learn that the wing is really one wing, installed in one piece. Through inspection hatches on the top of the fuselage one can see the normally-hidden center section of the wing – it’s even skinned and airfoil in cross section. Paul pointed out that at least two modern planes, the C-130 and the C-141, are constructed in a similar manner, with the wing built in one piece. Hey -- you learn something new every day! Also, being on the wing gave me a good view of the big R-2600s, their equipment and the fact that each engine mount is attached to the main spar of the wing by only four bolts – four STRONG bolts!

All in all, I left the Privateer knowing that there’s yet another Warbird that I’m absolutely in love with! I know that you’re not supposed to end sentences with prepositions, but I hear that my high school English teacher died years ago. [Maybe now we have a clue, why! --ed.]

I need to also list the other LSFM staff members who made my visit memorable: Jim Williams, Barry Elkins and the Jacobsen twins, Jim and Jerry. Other gentlemen who are, or were, involved heavily in this project are Bob Colley and James “Speedy” Dobranich. A special thanks to Valarie Barak, who arranged my visit and who scheduled staff members to baby-sit this reporter.

Valarie asked me to remind everyone out there that the LSFM spring airshow is scheduled for April 27th and 28th. I attended the last one and it was a very good airshow – there are a good number of planes, flyovers, acrobatics, FOOD and displays, and crowds are not as big as the ones at the big city airshows. Three weeks before the airshow, there’s also a hangar dance set for April 6th. Details have been covered by ANN in previous editions, so check it out – or go to the website.

FMI: www.lsfm.org