Who is this guy?? | FerrariChat

Who is this guy??

Discussion in 'Aviation Chat' started by tbakowsky, Oct 12, 2012.

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  1. tbakowsky

    tbakowsky F1 World Champ
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    Ok..watching Million Dollar Collections on A&E the other night. They profiled a Fellow named Kermitt Weeks. He has a collection of over 160 vintage world war 2 aircraft. Including a B-24 bomber and a Lancaster that he is restoring. He also owns the plane that was used in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the ford Trimotor.

    I'm amazed one guy could own so many airplanes, and they all fly!! The costs per year must be insane, let alone having 2 full time techs to pay aswell. I was blown away! Anybody here know him personaly? How on earth did he get the money to do this? I'm one jelous fellow at the moment!!
     
  2. Etcetera

    Etcetera Two Time F1 World Champ
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    Inherited oil money.
     
  3. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Jim Pernikoff
  4. spirot

    spirot F1 World Champ

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    I've flown with Kermit Weeks...in his P51 Mustang back in the mid 90's... super nice guy, and GREAT pilot.

    Fantasy of flight is an amazing place, I remember he was just starting a Zero restoration. It was in 3 lumps in the corner of the hanger.
     
  5. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    He has the world's only flyable B-26 Marauder, which is why he doesn't fly it! I can sympathize with that, especially since it is one of the early short-winged versions, which were rather tricky (and led to the "Flying Prostitute" nickname). He also has a once-flyable D.H. Mosquito, which has been on long-term loan to the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, if he hasn't actually donated it to them.

    On the other hand, he has a large stash of Allison V-1710 engines, which he supposedly acquired to keep them out of the hands of hydroplane racers and pulling tractors. As a fan of hydroplane racing, I'm not sure I like that tactic!
     
  6. Bob Parks

    Bob Parks F1 Veteran
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    I have to disagree with you on the hydroplane engine thing. I think that those RR Merlins and V-1710's were wasted on people who didn't have a clue as to what they were and what they did 65 years ago. I feel that they should be saved for the machines for which they were designed. It always made me feel bad when one was blown up in a boat. I wholeheartedly agree with you on the B-26 Marauder. An engine out on take off is deadly if the pilot doesn't use procedures that are counter to normal reactions, like retarding power on the good engine to stabilize asymmetry of power and lift. A huge amount of lift on the B-26 came from prop wash behind the engines. Lose power, lose lift, lose directional control, gain a roll into the bad engine. I have mentioned before about the wreckage that I could see in Tampa Bay at the end of the runway at MacDill Field. " One A Day In Tampa Bay". It was a scary airplane but my late brother-in-law said that he would rather take it into action than the B-25 because it was so tough. My overflights were in 1946 and I suppose that it is no longer visible.
     
  7. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Well, of course, nowadays all of the hydroplanes are running Lycoming T55s (taken from early-model Chinooks), so the only hydros running V-12s are the vintage ones, and they obviously don't run the engines at anything near full throttle settings or use nitrous oxide.

    If there were that many Marauders in Tampa Bay, I wonder why no one has tried to salvage anything? Or is the assumption that the salt in the water would have caused everything to deteriorate to an unusable state?

    (Another aircraft that used propwash to generate a lot of its lift was the Lockheed L-188 Electra. A very early crash of an American Airlines Electra into the East River while attempting to land at La Guardia was attributed to the pilot, who had few Electra hours, trying to use DC-6 procedures; it didn't work!)
     
  8. ArtS

    ArtS F1 Veteran
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    Mr. Weeks also has a couple of B-29s.

    Regards,

    Art S.
     
  9. rob lay

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    hmm, but there is only one flying one right now? FiFi.
     
  10. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Well, neither one is flyable as of now. I saw one of them, the well-known P2B called "Fertile Myrtle" which is stored in sections in a warehouse across the road from Fantasy of Flight, which can be accessed by shuttle tram from the main museum. This was the drop aircraft for the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket.
     
  11. Bob Parks

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    #11 Bob Parks, Oct 12, 2012
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2012
    Jim, The B-26 wreckage in the bay was in shallow water, plenty of salt , plenty of oxygen,plenty of sunshine, and lots of current. They were broken up pretty well, too. They didn't last long.
    Re the Electra incident, brings back some memories of the Stratocruiser crash into Puget Sound when the flight engineer used DC-6 procedures in a Boeing. Well ingrained training is hard to break. During the war this country lost 15,000 aircrew and 14,000 aircraft in a little under 4 years IN THE U.S. When I was a kid living in Florida during that three years before I went in I saw crashes and incidents almost every day.
     
  12. Tcar

    Tcar F1 Rookie

    Didn't know that... Electra-2 wings were fairly short... makes sense...

    Then there was the outboard engine mount oscillation thing later that brought several of them down, minus a wing.
     
  13. Bob Parks

    Bob Parks F1 Veteran
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    Brings back my working with the engineer who solved that engine/nacelle/ wing failure. She figured correctly that the engine mount bulkhead was too weak and the skins on the nacelle were too thin and failed to damp the gyroscopic precession of the props when they started to oscillate in turbulence. The "bounces" of the nacelle were fed into the wing which fed the reaction back into the nacelle which fed the.....
    The wings eventually were twisted enough to fail and depart the fuselage. I think that one of the fuselages that impacted in Indiana went so deep into the soil that no effort was made to recover what little was left. " Pete" Plunket proved her theory by designing a flutter model of the assembly that was conclusive.
     
  14. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Whirl mode flutter was not new, but it was exaggerated in turboprops because the engines was turning, as well as the props, and I'm certain the broad chord of the props (which created that propwash) added to the effect. The structure was, in theory, strong enough, but not stiff enough, and even minor damage (say, from a hard landing) would be enough to make those outer nacelles susceptible to flutter.

    When the outer nacelles would then be excited, perhaps by turbulence, they would begin to wobble, sort of like a spinning top which was disturbed by tapping it with a finger. The osciallations would begin with high frequency and low amplitude, but fairly rapidly, the frequency would drop and the amplitude would increase. A point would be reached where the frequency would match the natural frequency of the wing, and then the whole wing would, effectively, begin to flap. Obviously the structure wasn't designed for that, and wing failure would occur within only about 20 seconds of the start of the initial wobble.

    Lockheed redesigned both the outer nacelle structure and the wing skins, and that effectively eliminated the problem. They rotated all of the existing Electras through their Burbank plant to modify them at their expense, in a massive program called LEAP (Lockheed Electra Action Program).

    Unfortunately, by that time medium range jets like the 727 and DC-9 were on the horizon, and Lockheed never sold another Electra. But they developed it into the Navy's P-3 Orion, which is still serving around the world, and many are getting newly-built replacement wings which will keep the basic L-188 design around for years to come.
     
  15. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    #15 Gatorrari, Oct 13, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 7, 2017
  16. Bob Parks

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    Jim,thanks for that precise explanation of the problem. That flutter model looks like the one that Plunket showed me. Built of balsa with magnesium spar chords. She raised the angle of thrust (you can see this in the break of the contour on the crown line of the nacelles) and indicated that the wing skins and nacelle skins be stiffened, and the engine mount bulkhead be strengthened.
     
  17. Tcar

    Tcar F1 Rookie

    Always thought the Electra-2 (Electra-1 was Amelia Earhart's plane) was a great looking plane... yes, it had a DC-6 looking fuselage and tail but the short wings and engine spacing gave it sort of a 'macho' look...


    The Vickers Viscount was a lot more successful... I grew up in Albuquerque and Continental used a lot of them... had an ad campaign that showed a quarter balanced on edge on the tray table... said, "try that in a piston powered plane".
     
  18. Ney

    Ney F1 Veteran
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    Just to tie this thread back to the primary focus of Ferrarichat, Kermit Weeks sister is Leslie Davies. Leslie and her husband Ed Davies have a very nice collection of historic Ferraris and both often participated in the Historic Challenge events racing 250 TR, 375 MM, 250 GTO and other fine examples. Both Kermit and Leslie are the grandchildren of the founder of Weeks Oil.
     
  19. I16

    I16 Formula 3

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    #19 I16, Apr 13, 2015
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    Kermit Weeks was in New Zealand last week.
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  20. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Nice-looking Albatros! They really like their WW I aircraft in New Zealand. They've built enough Dr.I replicas to operate an entire Jasta!
     
  21. RWP137

    RWP137 Formula 3

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    I'm calling my Grandfather tonight...need to have a little chat.
     
  22. I16

    I16 Formula 3

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    #22 I16, Apr 15, 2015
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    Where are those pups?
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  23. Gatorrari

    Gatorrari F1 World Champ
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    Yeah, they may have Warner Scarab engines and tail wheels, but that still makes a nice photo!
     
  24. tazandjan

    tazandjan Three Time F1 World Champ
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    They are building new Oberursel Ur.IIs now and fitting them into the Dr.Is and F.Is (E.V/D.VIII, too, and even a D.VI). They are even looking at manufacturing Sh.IIIs that were fitted to the SS D.III/IV. Mercedes D.IIIa engines, too.
     
  25. I16

    I16 Formula 3

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    #25 I16, May 13, 2015
    Last edited: May 13, 2015

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