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Princess’ Pilot

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Our dear family friend, Curt McAtee, who is 81 years old, piloted the Consolidated B-24 Liberator named Princess shown on Aviation History’s March 2000 cover. He called to tell us his plane was on the cover, so we naturally picked up several copies. Curt is proud of serving his country and was anxious to share a picture of his plane with us.

Teresa Mason
Fountain Valley, Calif.

Peruvian NA-50s

About your “Aerial Oddities” department in the March issue, I’d like to tell you that, of the seven North American NA-50s purchased by my country (Peru) back in 1939, at least one was lost in action during the war against Ecuador in 1941. That plane was flown by Captain Jose A. Quiñones, who was performing a dive-bombing mission against Ecuadorian positions. Quiñones was hit by AA fire, which set the plane afire. According to his comrades, he refused to jump from the damaged plane and then dived against the enemy AA batteries, crashing to his death and becoming one of the Peruvian air force’s greatest heroes.

Of this bunch of planes, at least one survives as an air force base gate guardian in Lima.

Manuel Antonio Cuba
via e-mail

Grizzly’s Aircraft Gun

I really enjoyed Edward H. Phillips’ article on the XA-38 Grizzly in the March issue. I saw it demonstrated back in about 1946 or so, and I always wanted to know more about it.

However, I did know a lot about one of its components back then: its 75mm aircraft gun. It functioned perfectly when I saw it fired way back then. Incidentally, the official U.S. Army Ordnance nomenclature for the gun was “75mm aircraft gun M10,” which included both the gun and its mount and feeder.

When the Vietnam War began to heat up, the U.S. Air Force began to wonder if they needed a cannon to complement or replace aircraft air-to-ground rockets, and they dragged the 75mm M10 out of storage. I did a couple of briefings for aircraft design groups on the gun, using both still picture slides and motion pictures.

One thing that impressed everybody who saw the briefings was that the 75mm gun’s muzzle flash was huge compared to the launch flash of a 5-inch high-velocity aircraft rocket. It could blind the aircraft’s pilot-gunner in marginal visibility or night conditions. It was decided that this problem, which could not be corrected, made the rocket a much more flexible weapon, and further work on the gun project was dropped. So far as I know, nobody has tried it since.

Keep up the good work. I read Aviation History and pass it on to my son, who also reads it.

Konrad F. Schreier, Jr.
Los Angeles, Calif.

Blood Chits

I read with interest your article on the blood chit in the May issue. On the wall of my den I have one from the Korean War era. I kept it on my person while I was at front-line air bases. Korea was still in a state of turmoil, with battle lines constantly changing, and I didn’t relish the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war.

The chits were not standard issue to us ground personnel, but they were readily available on the local market. We were wary, since our original destination on the TDY orders was Pyong Yang in November 1950, but while we were en route there it was overrun and we were detoured to Japan for a while. We were a Sabre jet outfit, sent in to counter the MiG-15s.

I remember Colonel Gabriel “Gabby” Gabreski as the first jogger I had ever seen. He jogged around the base (K-13 at Su-Won) every day. Having been shot down and been a POW during World War II, he said, “It ain’t happening again if I can help it.” He told us he was going to hit the ground running south until he saw the Stars and Stripes again. That was in the summer of 1951.

Norm Kalow
4th Fighter-Interceptor
Wing Association
Ravenna, Ohio

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