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With its departure from the United States for restoration being complicated somewhat by the global logistics situation over the last few months, we are pleased to share with everyone that the Dauntless has now boarded the Olivia Maersk to make the trip to New Zealand. The restoration plan outlined at the start of the project…

A question that comes up quite a bit in the Museum is, how much of an airplane is original. We always answer, as much as possible! Certainly the original rub strips from the last update needed replacing, but in this update we are going to focus on the work that goes into keeping a piece…

More work forward of the firewall! Work at Pioneer Aero is continuing on the dish pan, with several areas of wear being addressed. Some of these areas where metal vibrates against other metal were anticipated by the engineers who designed the airplane, with rub strips being installed to create a barrier of sacrificial metal that…

The chassis of the fuel truck has been stripped all the way down. With the removal of the brake lines, left and right running board mounting brackets, battery box, the radiator and its frame, the truck is now about as far apart as it will be! With the sandblasting of the frame, the process of…

With a second partial airframe made available through the parts we shipped to New Zealand, the team at Pioneer Aero has been able to start working on the “Dish Pan” for the Dauntless. The dish pan is a heat shield that attaches to the engine mounts that attach at the firewall which separates the engine…

Control surfaces are the focus for the Dauntless team at the moment. The Rudder in particular has been receiving a lot of attention. Although mostly original (to a parts donor airframe) the rudder had been taken apart and reassembled at some point in its life. Some of the reassembled parts were not perfectly aligned, and…

It has been a while since our last Dauntless Update, and the eagle eyed among you have likely noticed that the fuselage is still awaiting transport here at the Museum (much to the frustration of the whole team!). The shipping challenges we have encountered have slowed the project down, preventing the fuselage from arriving in…

2020 seems like so long ago! We located a WWII Fuel Truck in Ohio, and we added it to the collection with a plan to make it serviceable for refueling our airplanes. We contacted the fine folks at Mil Spec Vehicle Restorations in Belvidere, New Jersey (a beautiful town if you ever get the chance…

The newest addition to the collection is an SNB-1! The Navy version of an AT-11 Kansan, this sometimes overlooked warbird had an outsized impact on the war! The AT-11 was the standard bombardier trainer for the US Army Air Forces during World War II and would be used to train around 90% of the more…

Following right along behind the Fuel Truck restoration is another new piece of equipment for the airfield! This 1941 International-built Fire Engine has come to us from North Carolina, and we are excited to get started. The current condition of the vehicle is being surveyed (it does run!) and a couple of ground rules have…