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Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Associated Press Photo
Maurice Kirk, standing by his World War II-era plane, Liberty Girl, was flying around the world in 2005 when he crashed the plane in Japan. Liberty Girl was loaded on a pickup truck Tuesday to be taken to Hampden, where it will be restored.
FREEPORT - A World War II plane that's believed to have been flown by Gen. George Patton arrived in Maine on Tuesday for renovations, two years after being damaged in a crash.
Maurice Kirk, who has owned Liberty Girl since 1979 and was flying around the world when he crashed in Japan, said the plane was flown by Patton in the weeks after the D-Day invasion in 1944. Patton, he said, flew over France to survey the battlefields.
During the war, hundreds of the drab-green planes were used for reconnaissance, medical evacuation and transporting supplies.
Newspapers and film clips of the day often showed military leaders, including Patton and other generals, flying around Europe in the two-seaters.
On Tuesday, Liberty Girl looked more like a heap of scrap metal, disassembled and piled into the back of a pickup truck on its way to Hampden, where it will be restored. The work is expected to be complete within a year.
"This is an important part of American history," said Kirk, 62, in an L.L. Bean parking lot, where he showed off the plane. "This here is a proper war bird."
Kirk, a retired veterinarian who lives near Cardiff, Wales, bought the plane from an aviation club in France. The plane has a 90-horsepower engine and a cruising speed of 75 mph. It is about 22 feet long and has a wingspan of about 33 feet.
Kirk was flying on a round-the-world journey in 2005 when he crashed the plane after experiencing engine trouble. He landed on a street in the city of Kanazawa, Japan, and a wing tip clipped a parked truck, causing his plane to "spin around like a pirouette."
After the crash, Kirk returned home to Wales while the plane stayed in Japan. Eventually, the plane was packed into a cargo container and shipped to the United States.
On Monday, Kirk and Jeff Russell, owner of the Center for Classic Aircraft Skills in Hampden, picked up the plane in Elizabeth, N.J., to drive it to Maine.
The plane was one of four or five Piper Cubs that served in Patton's 3rd Army as it rolled across France and into Germany, Russell said.
Given Patton's penchant for jumping into the planes and flying over battlefields, it is likely that he flew Liberty Girl, Russell said.
To bring the plane back to life, Russell will take it apart, rebuild the fuselage and put it back together. "This piece of junk will be a beautiful, beautiful airplane, hopefully by next summer," he said.
The plane has had its share of adventures since Kirk bought it.
In 2001, he flew it in a race from England to Australia.
In 2005, his transglobal trek found him flying just feet above the ocean, deserts and treetops as he traveled across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. The old plane often had engine trouble, Kirk said, forcing him to make emergency landings on beaches and in jungles.
Kirk has hundreds of stories about his globe-trotting adventures in the plane, and he said he's hoping the renovation job will take closer to six months than a year so he can get back in the air again.
"I've got itchy feet." he said.
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Hundreds of stories? I'll bet that he actually has only four or five stories that tells over and over again in a lilting British accent while sipping foul tasting gin-based cocktails and saying "It was bloody awful!" over, and over, and over again...
Can we get that plane repaired any SOONER?report abuse
I'll see what I can do! Bloody good fun!
Jeff Russell
Managing Director
Center for Classic Aircraft Skills
Hampden, Waterville, St. Louis and Tampa
Southampton, UK
www.flyccas.com
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My only question is: can I help?report abuse
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