This was part of Walter Soplata's collection in Newbury, Ohio aboyt 10 miles from my house. The Super Corsair #74 was raced by Cook Clelland after WWII. It wassold to the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum where I had been a volunteer for several years. Cleland flew the F2G shown here, known as “Race 74” for the number it was assigned, to victory in the 1947 Thompson Trophy race. In 1950 (some sources say 1953) it was bought by the late Walter Soplata for storage—preservation would be too kind a word—in his extensive warbird junkyard, and in 1997 the Western Reserve Historical Society purchased it for display in their Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, in Cleveland. The airplane was then trucked to Odegaard Aviation, in Kindred, N.D., for a full restoration. Sadly, Bob Odegard died in a crash at Reno flying #74. RIP Bob Odegaard Memorial Video With Song • • I Miss You Bob - YouTube F2G Racer Returns | Historynet 21 Photos of Northeast Ohio's Deserted Plane Sanctuary (clevescene.com) In the late 1940's a man named Walter Soplata began collecting warplanes on some land in Newbury, Ohio, just east of Cleveland. Today, about 30 engines and 50 aircrafts currently lie in the "plane sanctuary." In the 60's and 70's Soplata hosted anywhere from 20-30 visitors every Sunday for a tour of his collection. The collection has been kept relatively secret since Soplata's passing in 2010. Soplata was a son of Czech immigrants who supported his penchant for collecting by working in a junkyard in Cleveland and, after that, as a carpenter. He managed to amass an impressive collection of rare aircrafts: a prototype North American XP-82 Twin Mustang, an F-82E Twin Mustang with Allison engines, an early Jet Age Chance-Vought F7U Cutlass, and a prototype of the Douglas AD Skyraider series, to name a few. Soplata never paid more than a few hundred dollars for a plane. One of Soplata's most prized warbirds was a B-25 bomber that he recovered from Lunken Airport in Cincinnati called "WILD CARGO." A man from Louisiana had been using the bomber to fly exotic animals from city to city, and was forced to make a belly-landing in the airport when the landing gear became inoperative. Check out these eerie photos of the old planes courtesy of Jayson Shenk, Flickr CC Hat tip to Air and Space Magazine for the info. By Xan Schwartz
The Jalopy Journal
