Earlier this week I went out to the San Marcos, TX municipal airport to take some pictures. While I was there, I remembered that the Commemorative Air Force, formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, has a hangar at the airport.
I have to say, I was not a fan of the Confederate Air Force, really just because of the name. Despite my feelings, I supported their mission to preserve militarily significant aircraft of WWII and beyond. Fast forward a couple of years and I found out, the whole “Confederate” name was really a play on words more than membership guidelines. The folks of the Commemorative Air Force are genuinely friendly plane nuts, just like me.
To make a long story short, the wing of the CAF that is housed at the San Marcos airport houses 2 units. The units are “The Yellow Rose Squadron” and the “Centex Squadron.”
My girlfriend and I walked around the hangar taking picture after picture and talking to the volunteers that do all the work for the organization. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any of our fancy cameras with us, all we had were our mobile phones. Despite that, I think the pictures came out good enough to share.
It was really cool to get to touch planes that you normally only see at the Smithsonian or in books and movies. They were open to the idea of me coming by there and filming some of the work that they do, so I’ll probably end up going out there again soon before they forget.
Without further ado, here are some of the pictures that we took:
This is one of 3 P-39 Airacobras that are still airworthy today:
P-39
They also had one of 2 known airworthy P-63 King Cobras in the hangar undergoing renovation
P-63
They had a beautifully restored T-6 Texan in the hangar. The T-6 was a trainer.
T-6 Texan
They also had a T-Bird, aka a T-33 Shooting Star parked out on the apron
T-33
The T-Bird has the distinction of featuring the best use of duct tape I’ve seen in a while…
T-33
But, the main attraction, for me anyway, was their big and beautiful B-25 Bomber. I heard it rumbling overhead while it was out on a sight seeing and proficiency flight around town.
The namesake of the Yellow Rose Squadron
B-25 Yellow Rose
Front view
B-25 Yellow Rose
Tail gunner position
B-25 Yellow Rose
This particular B-25, is painted in the North Africa scheme. I learned that it was originally used as a training plane for bombardiers and navigators, later on it was a crop dusting plane and was eventually acquired by the CAF and meticulously restored. The plane originally had a solid nose, but while at an airshow, there was another B-25 there who’s owner hated the glass nose, so the CAF and this other gentleman spent a day trading noses.
Something else that I thought was really neat, is that the all of the planes in the CAF honor the crews of planes that were lost in WWII. The crew that this B-25 honors, were lost on the return leg of a bombing run into Italy.
All images credit: iloveplanes
