Iain Mackenzie wrote us today: “The Privateer was at Mesa Falcon Field and was probably the highlight of my trip finding it there!” Iain Mackenzie took these photos on a 1990 road trip in Arizona and has recently shared these with us.
Part of his earlier message back in December:
Looking for info. In 1990 during a photo tour of Arizona, I came upon a C-54 tanker sitting on what I thought was a random field near Picacho. We were told it was on standby or stored for the quiet season. Later years I see that there used to be an auxiliary airfield there, and it's now a U.S. Army helo training field. Can anyone confirm this is indeed where the aircraft was parked. And the reason. Thanks and Happy New Year from Scotland!!
You can follow along in the comments [HERE] how readers on this site have been keeping up with Iain and awaiting his photos (slides in the attic!) and here you have a couple of them:
… AND … my personal favorite photo here (THANKS Iain) for several reasons ….
THANKS VERY MUCH, Iain, for taking the photos so long ago, and saving the slides all this time, and going to some serious effort to go find them in your attic and scan them and send them to us. Hope you have a WONDERFUL 2024 !
Those C-54/DC-4s were still at Marana Regional Airport (KAVQ) when I was there a few years ago. Along with a couple P-2s if memory serves.
Love the photos. I spent an hour googling Wikipedia and other historical sites reading about the history of the C-54s.
It looks like the N numbers of all have been de-registered and are still available. Search here https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry
The caption on the photo of Tanker 111 has the 4 and 5 transposed. It should be N96451 not N96541.
THANKS TOM, I fixed it.