Military Aircraft at Traveltown

[Gregory K. Ramsey]

Traveltown, the transportation museum at Griffith Park in Los
Angeles is narrowing its subject area from general
transportation to strictly railroad related exhibits. In line
with this, the Recreation and Parks department has traded it's
last two aircraft to the National Museum of the War Years
located at Eagle Field near Merced. In trade Traveltown is
getting a quantity of rail.

The first aircraft is a Navy P2 Neptune built in 1949 by
Lockheed. It has a tail number of 359 with China Lake painted
below that. When I last saw it about 2 1/2 weeks ago they had
disassembled the nose, propellers, engine cowling, outer part of
the wings, tail and fuselage behind the main wing. It may be
completely gone now.

The second aircraft is a Navy F95-2 Panther built by Grumman.
It has a tail number of 420. This aircraft is supposedly one
of the only ones of it's type left that actually saw combat.
Disassembly of it had not started yet but will be very simple
since only the wings have to come off to transport it.

The museum members that are doing the disassembly claim that
they expect to make both aircraft fly. The engines are
complete and still turn on the Neptune and they claim to have
an engine for the Panther.

Both aircraft had been extensively vandalized since their
arrival at Traveltown in 1956. Since there was no one to care
for them here, I am glad to see them go to another museum.
Hopefully they will be cared for properly and it will gave us
badly needed room to improve and expand our museum facilities.

If anybody would like to get more information, drop me line
and I try and fill in as many details as possible.

Greg

Update as of 23 September 1990

The engines and all of the fuselage not directly connected to
the landing gear have been dissassembled. The engines have
been removed from the park and much of the other parts have
been loaded upon a flat bed trailer.

The Panther has not been touched yet.

--
gr...@anacapa.ncel.navy.mil Greg Ramsey
_n_n_n____i_i ________ Naval Civil Engineering Lab
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