These Frankenplanes Are Built From Parts of Other Planes
Some monster aircraft were not born. They were bolted together from whatever lay at hand.
By Cory Graff
AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
FEBRUARY 2021
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The airplane with mismatched wings with Japanese characters on the wing and Roman letters on the body
With no DC-3 wings to be found, maintenance crews repaired the damaged aircraft with a DC-2 wing, five feet shorter than the original. The cobbled-together airplane, said engineer Sol Soldinski, became almost as famous as the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis. (Pan Am Archive / Richter Library / University of Florida)
The big silver airplane parked in an open field was the only worthy target for miles. The Japanese bombers quickly sieved the exposed Douglas DC-3 with hundreds of machine gun bullets. Hugh Woods, a pilot with China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC), was watching from a nearby hillside. His heart sank as a 100-kilogram bomb detonated under the right wing of his aircraft, throwing dirt, grass, and splintered aluminum across Suifu airfield.
His crew and passengers were alive and unharmed, but his precious airplane was gone. With the wing mangled, there would be no chance of escape. More attackers would soon return to finish the job. The best Woods and his men could do was to hide the wounded airliner among the trees, radio back to base, and hope for a miracle.
In the spring of 1941, Douglas transport aircraft were nearly priceless in China. When CNAC’s chief of maintenance Zygmund “Sol” Soldinski received the news in Hong Kong, he decided it was well past time to start drinking. As Sol downed a few glasses of White Horse whiskey, he deliberated the problem with managing director P.Y. Wong.
There was no spare DC-3 wing in China. Douglas Aircraft Company would take months to make another one. And then they couldn’t ship it, at least not on an American vessel. There were wartime neutrality laws. Even if they had a wing, and it was in Hong Kong, how would they get it 860 miles into the middle of nowhere? By ship, then via truck? There was seemingly no practical way to get the job done.
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https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/frankenplane-180976754/
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