The Saga of the F2G Corsair #74 Air Racer - Part 3: 74-Walters
By Rodney Williams
During the 1980s I was living in San Jose, California, which is about 50 miles south of San Francisco.
Shortly after I joined “The Society of Air Race Historians” (S.A.R.H.), in 1984, which is located in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I started corresponding via ordinary letter writing, including some telephone calls to Jim Butler and Ron Eminger who were both members of S.A.R.H; and lived near Cleveland.
Ron and I built plastic airplane models and we were members of IPMS/USA, including members of our local area IPMS model clubs. We got to chatting about the race years in Cleveland during the late 1940s. (1946-1949).
I do not recall if Jim was an IPMS member but he surely was a go-getter in SARH, especially on the F2G Corsair that was built only by “Goodyear Aircraft Corporation,” better known as G.A.C.
Ron and I found out that we both attended the races each year and took our own 35mm black and white photos. My very first “sepia-tone” photo of #74 in the “CLEVELAND” segment of these stories is 99% identical to the one Ron took in September, 1949. Too bad we did not meet up in those days. Sad to say, I never got a copy of Ron’s photo of #74.
Ron attended the 1986 IPMS/USA National Convention, which was held in Sacramento, California. Since I lived in San Jose, I just had to go to the show so I could meet Ron and see his scratch-built 1:24 scale F2G racer #74. Needless to say, Ron won the first place award in the “scratch-built” category.
Over the next few months Ron sent me just about everything that a model builder needs to scratch-build an F2G racer.
In fact I have a copy of the “Preliminary Erection and Maintenance Handbook – BuOrd No. 88463 NAVY MODELS F2G-1 ~ F2G-2 Airplanes”, dated 1 August 1945. Of course (88463) was none other than Cook’s racer #74.
Ron also sent me a “RESTRICTED -- AN 01-195FA-1 copy of the Pilot’s Handbook” for NAVY MODELS F2G-1 ~ F2G-2 Airplanes, dated 15 December 1945.
I re-entered the model building hobby in 1977 and up until I got the “bug” in the mid 1980s to build a F2G Corsair all of my models were “Out-of-the-Box”. I never scratch-built any part of a model, let alone the whole thing so I choose the 1:32 scale Revell F4U 1A Corsair kit and converted it to the F2G racer #57. A story of this racer was posted on (www.skywriters.net ) over a decade ago. An additional four (4) stories can be found on (www.arcair.com). And least we not forget: “I have posted a few F2G stories on LSP, (Large Scale Planes) website under the WW-II heading”.
Anyway, I got finished with my first F2G model in time to meet up with Ron at the 1987 Washington, D.C. IPMS/USA National Convention. Ron was playing games with me and a good friend of his by the name of Auggie Hupp.
Ron was saying that I could not beat Auggie’s scratch-built 1:24 scale Fw 190D-9 Dora, then he tells Auggie that Rodney is here with his F2G. This was the first year that Auggie did not win a first place award as my #57 took top honors.
We had a great time at the show and Ron talked me into coming to Ohio after the convention was over so I could meet Jim Butler and we could all go over to see Cook's other surviving F2G Corsair racer #74 which was located at his friend's farm. That friend just happened to be Walter Soplata.
Since I had a brother living near Akron, Ohio, I went to his home for a short visit then he took me up to Ron’s home in the city of Euclid, which was just a bit East of Cleveland, Ohio.
Jim Butler came over and we made plans to go to nearby Newberry, Ohio where Walter lived.
Ron took his #74 racer over with us so he could show it to Walter, but sad to say no one was home at the homestead. We stayed a few hours to look at all the airplanes that Walter collected.
The moral of the story is: If it had not been for Walter, #74 may not be with us today along with so many other aircraft that he brought home. We wondered how he got those big airplanes down that small one lane county dirt road.
On January 14, 2010 a fellow modeler sent me a story about Walter, which was written by his son Wally who had it posted on the “EAA News” web site.
The article related a few words about how Walter was able to collect several aircraft and store them “outdoors” on his property near Newberry, Ohio. Due to “copyright” laws I am not sure that I can enclose “EEA’s” web site.
However, you can do like I do and find several stories about airplanes on the web.
Recently I typed in “Walter Soplata’s Aircraft Collection” on Google’s search engine and retrieved several items. Then, I was able to click on IMAGES at the top of Google’s home page and type in Walter Soplata’s name and click on SEARCH. Lots of photo pages came up, however there were dozens of unrelated photos among Walter’s.
I have enclose my photos including a black and white photo of Walter and one in color of him and his wife that I found on the web.
A photo credit has to go to my friend Jim Sullivan who supplied me with a real nice black and white view of #74 at Walter’s place.
Another photo credit goes to Martin Braunlich who sent me his color negatives in 2002 so I could scan them into my P.C. Martin said that he took the photos sometime in the early 1970s.
An additional photo credit goes to my friend Jim Bates who supplied me with his photos of racer #74 that was loaded on a tractor-trailer. It was being transported to Bob Odegaard’s restoration facility in the state of North Dakota.
I have enclosed one of several letters that Jim Butler wrote to me.
In my next saga, I’ll show you a few photos of #74 being restored to “flying” condition.
Until then, enjoy the ride.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Rodney
© Rodney Williams 2011
This article was published on Friday, February 03 2012; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016