By ANN Correspondent Rob Milford

By the time we got to the “Field of Dreams” the heat and humidity were starting to take their toll. It was great walking out onto the grass, now looking well trod on Friday morning, after good crowds, and pounding rain two or three times during the week.

The “Big Iron” for Oshkosh this year consisted of big-twins. Three HU-16 Albatross tri-phibians. That’s right… tri-phibian, capable of landing on a runway, the ocean, or ice & snow. One is in Coast Guard colors, saluting the 75th anniversary of Coast Guard aviation,owned and flown by Connie Edwards of Big Spring, Texas. Next over is in Air Force paint, owned by Don Reynolds of Bealton, Virginia and a third in an unremarkable civilian blue and white. A Saturday visitor was brought in, with a striking white over aqua paint job, with a broad orange stripe. Parked wingtip to 96-foot wingtip, they were impressive.

A trio of DC-3/C-47’s were right there, one in red and white North Dakota Air Guard paint, Wiley Sanders DC-3 in Douglas Aircraft corporate paint, and the C-47 from Cavanaugh flight Museum, OD with invasion stripes. A pair of B-25’s were surrounded by people, and one of these was "Old Glory" a B-25N in natural metal with bombardier noses. A-26C was alongside, "Hard to Get" with a glass nose. It also hase markings of Fire 58. The CAF’s Ju-52 was next, open for tours, plenty of souvenirs for sale.

For “rare” the 1960 Howard 500 squatted on the grass. What a formidable aircraft. Those R-2600’s are HUGE, and what it was doing parked in the warbird area, I have no idea. We cut across to the next line, and came up on another Howard, this one a 1943 GH-2 Nightingale. Used as both an ambulance and a trainer for the Navy, this sported the overall dark blue paint, wrapped around the R-985, which made the “For Sale” sign even more noticeable. I guess the folks in Denton, Texas, want to change out their hangar line-up.

Sitting up next was a G-44 Widgeon, owned and flown by Gary Applebaum of Hopkins, Minnesota. This one sports an authentic 1941 Coast Guard paint scheme, since this aircraft was one of the first accepted for service, and was restored by the Wien family during the 1980’s. This smallest of the Grumman amphibians is powered by a pair of those pretty rare 200HP Ranger “inverted, in-line, 6 cylinder” engines. The plane will celebrate its 62nd birthday in August.

You want rare? How about a Helio Stallion AU-24A? No, I’d never seen one either, which got my tongue hard and drooling as I walked in that direction. In a sharp civilian scheme, I’m told this is one of only two in civilian hands, and with that PT-6A swinging an 11-foot prop, with 680 horses, it has all the power you would need. Tim Green owns this one from North Carolina. That AU-24 is the USAF designation, and I’m sure some “Air Commando” types, or maybe Air America veterans could provide more details on the where and how these were used, and maybe still are, eh?

There were three lines of T-6’s, SNJ’s and Harvard’s stretching off into the distance. Pick a paint scheme, and it was there. I like the gray-orange-yellow that seems peculiar to Guantanamo, Cuba. The navy three-tone blue also looks sharp, and a pair of SNJ’s is wearing that, and one of those with the red-outlined star and bar. Came across an NA-50, from Steve Hay in Syracuse, Indiana. That was set to be the fighter version of the Texan, but saw action only in Peru, under the lend-lease as a P-64. I’m suspecting that this is a more recent modification, but I stand to be corrected.

There was more walking to be done, but at that moment, there was a high speed taxiing collision between a pair of home builts on runway 9/27, not more than a hundred yards away. A couple of broken wings, no one hurt or bleeding, and it was the most excitement of the morning. Tomorrow, we finish up the walk through the warbirds, including the fighter bullpen, and a flock of Grasshoppers.

FMI: www.airventure.org