At The Airport…

Seen on the ramp at the Lincoln Airport on Saturday, May 26, was this rare Army Air Corps P-64. Well, not so rare and not a P-64 at all, but actually a highly-modified Canadian Harvard rebuilt to resemble, quite accurately, a P-64 fighter with the Army serial of 39-086. The North American Aviation P-64 was a derivative of the company’s BT-9 basic trainer, the same basic design that later developed into the Army T-6 and Navy SNJ advanced trainers, which North American called the NA-68. Only thirteen NA-68s were built for export to Peru and Thailand in 1940, and the six destined to Thailand were instead impounded by the U.S. and pressed into service in the Air Corps as P-64 pursuit trainers. Only one P-64 is known to have survived the war, and it is on display at the EAA Museum at Oshkosh. The above “P-64” started life as a Canadian Harvard Mk IV built in 1952 by the Canadian Car & Foundry as CCF4-261. It is currently owned by Gary Peters of Clarkston, Washington, and files as N202LD. Can’t say what it was doing at Lincoln but it was an unusual visitor worth noting, don’t you think? (Scott Thompson)