| [Wings 'n' Things/Aviation...Wings.370...Sept. 5, 2005]
MOVING HISTORIC DC-3 All Coast Aircraft Recovery was featured in this column a few years ago. A small aircraft recovery, repair and restoration company headed up by retired Navy Commander and Love's Landing resident Chuck Mosely travels around the country to take apart, move and reassemble military aircraft on demand. When requested, Mosely gathers up his crew from all over the United States and does whatever is necessary to fulfill a unique aviation niche, move retired fighters as part of the Military Museum Temporary Loan Support Program. But in mid-August Mosely's group carried out an unusual request on a very historic airplane. The group this time consisted of Jim Brody, Ray Brown, and Michael Schiavone of Love's Landing, Denny Farmer from Santa Rosa, CA, Cris Ferguson from Evansville, AR, and Bill Mosely from Jacksonville. They went to the Key West International Airport and took apart a Douglas DC-3. That was a big project in itself. It took three trucks to carry the huge plane, separated into three major sections: the wings and center section, the twin engines, and the landing gear and fuselage. On the fourth day the trucks traveled up the dual-lane road out of the Keys with their 14-foot-wide loads, leaving at 4 a.m. to help with traffic flow. Their destination was the Avon Park Municipal Airport. Once there. All Coast unloaded the trucks and partially reassembled the aircraft for temporary storage until a complete restoration can be accomplished sometime in the future. The plane is now in a hangar, back on its gear, with wings and all other parts necessary for reassembly stored along with it. Unusual as this project was, it gained further notoriety because it wasn't about just any DC-3. This one was in the news back in March of 2003 when it was hijacked with 31 passengers and six crewmembers aboard. The Cuban-registry plane departed the Isle of Youth bound for Havana. When it was about 11 miles from Havana, the six crewmembers, using knives and an aircraft hatchet, commandeered the plane and had it diverted to Key West. The craft then sat on the tarmac at Key West International Airport until June of 2004, when it was sold at auction, first to a Colorado pilot, and then to the current owner, Don Soldini, a Pompano Beach real estate developer. The US government didn't want the plane returned to Cuba and had refused to allow it to fly because of its Cuban registration, which resulted in the sale at auction. Eventually it proved to be a hazard at the Key West airport. When Hurricane Dennis blew through last year, along with other damage, the huge aircraft was blown 1700 feet down the ramp. That's when Soldini got busy searching for a way to move the plane to a safer location. Owning property across from the airport in Avon Park, he hired All Coast to make the transfer. Just before the project began it was decided not to place the plane on Soldini's vacant Avon Park property but to move it to the airport for security reasons. Soldini also made arrangements to have the entire disassembly, moving, and reassembly project filmed: it will appear on the Discovery Channel at a later date. The Aerotaxi CU-T1192 was built in January 1942 and shipped to the Royal Air Force in India. It served for about 30 years in that capacity, then was reconfigured as an airliner and flew the skies over Canada. It later was sold to a Cuban concern and used there as an inter-island airliner until it was hijacked in 2003. |