[Flying Beauty Keeps Shine] Page: 1 of 8
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Flying beauty keeps shine
'40s training plane soars in Sweetwater
By Greg Kendall-Ball
alif a. deKnews 325-676-6721
SWEETWATER -- She looks pretty good for a 68-year-old.
Her skin is still smooth and taut. Sure, her tail might drag a bit, but she can still get up and move with the speed
and grace she exhibited in the 1940s. She looks radiant in yellow and blue, sitting there waiting for Bill Johnson to
come along and take her out, which he does about once a week. Johnson cleans her up and takes her out about
five hours each month. She's a lot of fun, he says, but she does make a heck of a racket.
That's likely because she is an airplane - a 1944 Fairchild PT-i19A, to be precise - and she's powered by a 200-
horsepower inverted 440-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine.
"I've had more fun flying this plane the last five or six years than any flying I've ever done," said Johnson. "I try to
fly it as much as I can, but it's a little bit harder in the wintertime, because there's no heater, and you can't exactly
close the windows."
The Fairchild - one of the models used to train female pilots in the Woman Airforce Service Pilots program at
Avenger Field during World War II -- is an open-cockpit design. And, because there's a wheel attached to the tail,
it's known colloquially as a "tail-dragger."
Johnson, president of Sweetwater's Texas National Bank, first got his pilot's license when he was 19, but had not
kept it current over the years. As a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Johnson was tasked with shuttling
former WASPs and other guests from the hotel to the museum during the first WASP Homecoming in 2006. A
group that had flown in for the homecoming event in a World War I-era plane invited Johnson to go up for a little
sightseeing, and Johnson said he caught the bug again.
As a member of the museum's board of directors, Johnson said, he was looking for a plane to put on display. He
nearly purchased an AT-6 trainer from California, but the plane was incapable of being restored to flying condition.
"In 2008, I was looking through Trade-aplane - which is sort of like AutoTrader, but for aircraft - and spotted this
Fairchild in Mineola, which was in pretty good shape, and practically the same price as the AT-6," Johnson said.
The plane was being o"ered by the widow of a man who collected old warbirds, and the Fairchild was the last plane
to be sold. So Johnson and a friend drove to East Texas, and flew her back to Sweetwater.
Johnson's PT-19A - which is on loan to the National WASP World War II museum - didn't actually fly at Avenger
Field. It was built in 1944 in Ohio, and ferried to Thompson-Robbins Field in Helena, Ark., where it was used to
train male pilots.
But women training in the WASP program used dozens of planes just like it in primary flight training. That's what
the "PT" in PT-i19A stands for.
" 'Primary training' is just that. A lot of the cadets who came out here had never even ridden in a plane before they
went up in one of these Fairchilds, or a Stearman," Johnson said. "And, they were expected to solo in it after just
eight hours of training."
From the Fairchild, the women progressed to flying the BT (or 'basic training") planes, and then to the AT
("advanced training") craft. "Each step up, the planes got a little faster, a little more complicated, a little more
maneuverable," Johnson said.
Flying his Fairchild - which has been restored to a prewar Army trainer paint scheme - is akin to riding an old
Harley, he said - lots of engine noise, lots of wind noise, but a silky smooth ride. It made a forgiving vehicle inhttp://abilenereporternews.tx.newsmemory.com/eebrowser/frame/check.6929/php-script/fu... 5/2 5/2012'
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Kendall-Ball, Greg. [Flying Beauty Keeps Shine], article, May 25, 2012; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1076919/m1/1/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National WASP WWII Museum.