But Brings Back Memories To Original WWII Pilot

That's gotta hurt. Modelmaker Greg Zola crashed his flying replica of a WWII P-38, a project three-years in the making, on its first landing in California Sunday morning at the Woodward Reservoir airstrip in eastern San Joaquin County.

"It was pilot error," lamented Zola, who built a one-fifth scale replica of the San Joaquin Siren, a World War II-era P-38 once piloted by Stockton's Bill Behrns.

Zola contacted Behrns, now 87, and asked permission to construct the radio-controlled replica and said when he finished he would drive it to Stockton and show it.

"I didn't think he needed my permission, but it sure was an honor," Behrns said.

Behrns flew 104 combat and six weather missions during World War II, mostly stationed in Chittagong, Burma, now the country of Myanmar. Behrns is the last of the 32 original pilots assigned to that special squadron of which only four survived.

"There are so few of us at my age still alive, to have this dead ringer of my plane built after all these years," Behrns said, "well, it's pretty special."

The Stockton native was shot down once, but belly-landed his plane on the Burma Road short of Mandalay.

Behrns let a friend borrow the San Joaquin Siren to procure rations from a Chinese airbase in October 1944, but the friend crashed the plane on his way back and was killed in the accident.

After spending two and half hours readying the P-38 replica for flight, Zola was eager to fly. The fighter circled the airfield three times, making a lower pass each time so spectators could get a better look, according to The Stockton Record.

Just as Zola had the plane lined up on final, a crosswind caught the plane -- which drifted to the right before slamming its left wing onto the tarmac. The wing shattered, and the plane reportedly tumbled to a stop.

"I slowed the aircraft too much for the crosswinds blowing," Zola said.

A fellow RC pilot and bystander commented of the event.

"The slow approach and the crosswinds is what got 'em," said Modesto resident Randy Sanders, an experienced model airplane pilot. "It was a combination of both."

FMI: www.twinbeech.com/warbird_group_page.htm