F4U-4 Corsair Olathe N.A.S. Reserve
The New Century AirCenter used to be a naval air station? Olathe Naval Air Station was dedicated in 1942 and supported military operations throughout World War II and beyond. In fact, notable Americans such as John Glenn and Bob Barker trained here!
Olathe-Corsair…..difficult to research, photographic material is scarce, at least from the period of use and/or even a flight record leads to absolute non-existence.
Not much is known about serial 97286, except that it was used as No5 at Naval Air Reserve Training (NART) Olathe. The Oltahe Corsairs were the last active Corsairs. 5 machines are known, including 11 with serial number 97264. Correct paint is always a controversial issue, although there really is no right and wrong. My machine model is No5, ie serial 97286, stored here in the Lichtfield “warehouse” Park NAS Arizona.
until 1959 when Robert Bean struck. Bean planned to convert No5 and 21 other Corsairs to flying condition and sell them to Honduras. But this only worked for 9 planes. “No5” was then assigned the civil reg. N5215V and remained unrestored at Blythe (California) until 1972 and was only moved to Los Angeles in 1972. years of unprotected standing obviously did the engine no good.
New owner Gustafson had the machine restored ready to fly. The restored fighter made its first flight in August 1973.
In 1987 97286 acquired a new owner, Mr. Jones from Minnesota. Already in 1988 the journey continued at Kermit Weeks (Weeks Air Museum) Today it flies in the colors of the F4u-4 corsair Red bull
The Olathe Corsairs are late F4U-4s, but their history is patchy as Navy records are inconsistent and inventory lists very fragmentary. However, image documents are relatively easy to read, so a good model can be built from them. Not all Olathes were gray over white as seen in the photos, but blue over all.
Some Corsairs lasted long enough in service to be repainted light gull gray (FS-36440) and white in accordance with the change introduced on 23 February 1955 following the failed “unpainted” exterior experiment. It was first introduced, to an extent, with some replacements for F4U-4s assigned to the Navy Reserve squadrons at Olathe, Kansas and Seattle, Washington. The last of these in overhaul retained their blue outboard wing panels and rudders but the fuselage and inboard wings were gray/white and the elevators, flaps, and ailerons were white. My guess is that the antiglare panel was nonspecular dark blue but it could have been black.
These were overhauled at San Diego and delivered in September/October 1955 to augment the remaining all-blue Corsairs in those units. My guess is that stripping and repainting the fabric-covered outer wing panels and rudder was deemed to be too much trouble given the likelihood of early retirement of these airplanes. The Olathe Corsairs, for example, went into storage at Litchfield Park in June/July 1956; at least two of the Seattle Corsairs left for Arizona in September 1956.
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