Deer Park man helps restore the kind of plane that rescued him in WWII
BY BILL BLEYER
[email protected]
March 25, 2007
It's not surprising that Frank Kittle feels an attachment to the World War II-vintage Navy PBY Catalina amphibious plane he is helping to restore at the American Airpower Museum.
The Deer Park resident, 83, not only flew on PBYs during the war but was rescued by one after he was shot down over the Atlantic in 1943 and drifted for 72 hours in a raft.
Flying on a lumbering Catalina, Kittle said, "was monotonous, long hours, noisy and cold. You had to dress real warm. They tried putting heat in them, but it didn't work."
The museum, at Republic Airport in East Farmingdale, acquired the search, rescue and antisubmarine aircraft last spring from an upstate aviation museum and, after some rehabilitation, flew it to Long Island in November.
The goal of American Airpower is to use the PBY as more than a static exhibit; it will be restored for ongoing flight, possibly by fall, as part of a living history program. Visitors would be able to pay to take a flight over Great South Bay and search for a mock-up of a German U-boat, echoing how the planes were used during the war.
"The goal of the plane in flight will be like our C-47 D-Day program, museum spokesman Gary Lewi said, referring to the flights that simulate what paratroopers experienced before landing in Normandy in 1944. "We want to show what it must have been like to be 19 years old flying in this type of airplane over the North Atlantic."
Originally Posted by Newsday
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