Amazing RNZAF Corsair photo on WIX

He does have a few more, they are on a FlyPast Forum thread
forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=82045

And only this morning I asked Mortmer if I could be allowed to post that photo here on this forum to which he has replied feel free, so...

Note how they've gone around the tail number during the repaint!

I should have known you guys were on to it!

Thanks for the link, there is some great stuff there.

Cheers
Anthony

Hello,

I am the person who posted the Corsair picture on WIX and the Australian/New Zealand pictures on the Flypast Forum. The pictures came from a collection that I was lent, to archive, after the owner died. The owner was a photographer with the US Marine Corps who served in MAG 61 (VMB 433) as an a aerial photographer during 1944/45 in the South Pacific.

All of the photographs in his collection are on a website I am hosting at -

spike.cs.umass.edu/~pbinder/FrankMAG61/

There is a section there labeled Allied Planes which has all of the Australian and New Zealand Air Force planes I have IDed so far.

If you can identify any planes/location or provide any information for any of the pictures I would be grateful since most of the photographs are not labeled.

Thanks,

Paul

Heres another shot of the same Corsair taken minutes before

These days OSH would insist they wore the approved safety clothing and by the time they got into it all would be too late.
Was that the freedom they were fighting for?

Interesting how they are spraying foam on just about everything BUT the fire! PPE wouldn't be too practical to wear in the tropics either I'm picking

One might ask: Why was a fully fireproofed suited fireman expected to run in such a condition? I'm just asking. Good on all involved.

There were certainly some bad aviation fires where brave men did brave things to save lives. Perhaps even more brave were the Air Force firemen who had to deal with whole fuel dumps going up in flames, which did happen a few times. One such was ex-Cambridge airman Hugh Marshall who was awarded a Certificate of Commendation for outstanding service in one such fire detailed on my site
www.cambridgeairforce.org.nz/Hugh%20Garden%20MARSHALL.htm

My grandfather, Jim Homewood, apparently pulled a guy from a burning Corsair that crashed on his Ardmore farm at one point, though he must have been shy about getting recognition because I cannot find mention of his deed in any documents I've seen (several aircraft crashed on their farm throughout the war), and he certainly never got a George Medal or such like, as others who did the same thing did. But Nana and Dad both saw him do it.

Mind you I saw Dad bend a car door clean in half so he could get in and pull two guys, one of them unconscious, out of a burning car in 1988. The petrol tank had burst too and there was a full tank of gas in the upside-down car's roof. After pulling the guys out he then stoped a truck, grabbed it's extinguisher and ran back into the flames and put the fricking thing out. Most heroic thing I have ever seen, and despite my attempts to help him, Mum firmly had hold of me and Dad was yelling to stay back. It was amazing to see what his adrenalin did, that Vauxhall Viva door was bent back double down the middle like a car crusher had hit it! Aferwards Dad couldn't believe he'd done it, and also admitted he'd thought all the liquid was just beer as they had just been to the liquor shop and stocked up for a big party before the car rolled. The driver was sobre as, and ended uo with just a cut ear. The passenger was actually asleep in the back seat and after Dad pulled him out only then he woke up and said "What's going on?" he didn't have a scratch. A few seconds later without Dad they'd both have fried.