During the summer of 2011, two individuals were cleaning up a property near the Bird Creek bridge, when one of them made an uncommon discovery. While moving some piled up pipe and fence posts, an old relic from the past emerged from under the junk pile. Most likely bewildered as to the find, the person that found the piece took it, and placed it in his garage, where it would stay for over a year, until the fall of 2012. One evening this past October my wife was on Facebook exchanging messages with another person in Barnsdall. As I came into the room my wife asked if I was interested in a piece that came off a plane, possibly a P-38. She told me the person who has it wanted to bring it by the house, cause they thought it may have come from a crashed P-38 and wanted me to take a look at it. Once again, the excitement was starting and the thought of what kind of piece was it that this person had? I replied to my wife to send them a message to bring it by and I'll look it over. Within the hour a truck pulled up in front of my house. As I walked out the front door to greet the two people in the truck, I tried to tell myself that this piece they had in their truck bed probably was not from the P-38 but from some other plane and I shouldn't get my hopes up.
As the tailgate on the truck came down, I looked over to see what they had brought. As I stood there and looked, it only took a split second to see that this was no ordinary piece of aviation. I could tell in an instant this was a WW II era propeller blade. I ran and got a tape measure to make some quick measurements and to get a feel for the size of the prop assembly as a whole and found it to be the right length and width. On closer inspection , I found that it was an aluminum blade which I felt made the find more significant. When asked if this could have been on the P-38 that crashed years ago, I said it was a good possibility but more research was needed to find out for sure. I asked them what they were going to do with it and they said they were going to give it to me since I liked planes. To me it was a mild shock but there was no way I was going to turn this down.I thanked them for the blade and told them I would let them know my findings after I made a few contacts with some other people.
The next day I took photos and measurements of the prop blade and looked for any markings that may have been on it. I came up empty on any marking or identifications. All I had to work with was the set of photos and dimensions of the blade. It wasn't looking very good at this time but I wasn't going to give up. My hunch was that it was either a B-25 or P-38 prop blade cause of the rounded tip of the prop.
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| Prop blade of the possible F-5E. The length of which is over 5' 6" and 11.5" wide. The base still has the bearing stack and spacer intact and blade retaining nut intact. |
At this point it was a toss up. Armed with very little information I began contacting aviation restoration groups with no luck. I then remembered the article I read a couple years back about the crashed F-5E and scrambled to find the web site, remembering the paragraph he wrote about finding other information on the plane crash and to contact him if they had found some. Possibly the author could help me out since he knew so much about the crash near Barnsdall? It wasn't long after that, I sent an email to the author Clint Daniel, along with the photos that I took of the blade to see what he thought of the chance of the blade being from the crash. His return email wasn't as good as what I had hoped for. Clint Daniel is an aviation archaeologist with many years experience in the Pacific digging up WW II crash sites and he thought that with the prop being in as good a shape as it was, it couldn't have been involved with the crash in 1945. He asked me if there were any ID numbers on the blade? I didn't find any on the inspection of the blade the first day I had it so I didn't send anything along with the email. A week went by and the prop blade was just laying on my driveway, I would look at it from time to time trying to think of a way to ID this piece of metal. I went over it again and again in my head until it came to me. The only place I never took a close look at was the base of the blade where it enters into the prop assembly. With decades of muck on the base I couldn't tell if anything was on it or not. Looking for a wire brush to clean up the base, I soon found out my wire brush was missing, I quickly made a trip to my dads house to borrow on from him. When I returned, I began the process of clearing the dirty years away from the base. It wasn't long before I took a look and seen three numbers emerge from the filth. It had taken about ten minutes to clean the base and when I finished, there they were. Every single number and letter was still visible for identification. It was now party time! New photos were taken of the ID numbers and another email was sent to Clint Daniel. His return email was more promising saying there was no doubt it was from a P-38 but it seem to be from a J model P-38. Unless there was a way to find the prop blades origin and what model plane the P-38 started as when it was built, the chances were slim to connect it to the crash.
It was time to call in the big guns and get some research. I contacted the Smithsonian's Air and Space Research group to help me out. I sent in the planes number 44-23602, the ID numbers and some photos of the prop blade. For my wait, I received an envelope three weeks later with all the information they had on the plane except for the maintenance records, which had been lost to history.
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| Part of the ID numbers on the prop blade base |
The plane was built as a P-38J-25 at Lockheed, in Burbank California and accepted into service on 6/8/44. From there it went to Coolidge Air Field in Arizona to be fit with a radio and dive flaps and photo equipment. It was then flown to Panama on 7/8/44. At this point the history of the plane is unknown till it returns to the states, which was common for all military planes during WW II. It returned to Vandalia Air Field in Ohio as a P-38 F-5E photo recon aircraft on 9/20/44, then to Wright Air Field in Ohio on 3/14/45. Then on 5/31/45, the F-5E would land at it's final Air Field at Coffeyville, Kansas.
The Smithsonian also sent a list of propellers and governors for service aircraft which had the information on the P-38J model with the prop assembly and blade number for the F-5 series planes. With this information, I contacted Clint Daniel by email and sent him the information. His return mail was an overwhelming jump for joy and there could be no doubt that the prop blade was from 2nd Lt. Charles R. Schliefers P-38 F-5E that crashed on July 2, 1945.
So what am I going to do with this piece of Barnsdalls' aviation history? It's hard to say. For over 40 years I've thought about this plane and now I have part of it. I'll just say it's in good hands at the moment and I'll think about what I'll do with it at a later time.
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