History

This aircraft was originally used by the Ryan School right off the assembly line, and assigned School #3. It was used both as a student trainer as well as a PT-16 “Army Demonstrator”.

Not much history is known of its early life.

At the airframe total time of 540 hours it had a new engine installed. By May, 1941 it had 1431 hours with the majority of the hours logged in 1941. In November 1941 it was force landed due to the left rudder pedal jamming in the lower longeron fitting. Another force landing occurred in February, 1942.

The next owner appears to have been Marshalls Flying Service. Marshall apparently operated the airplane in the CPTP program during WWII. They then sold it in June 1945 to Earl C. Henry.

Parts and other components were ordered from the Ryan company in January, 1947.

It remained in dead storage from 1947 to 1953 or 1956. Then it was sold in 1963 to Roy W. Turner. According to Turner, all the instruments in the aircraft were Japanese. They were installed shortly following WWII, when such a practice was popular? None of the instruments worked, so he ferried the aircraft to Oklahoma without the Airspeed indicator, altimeter, or tachometer working. In fact he did not known what RPM he had set at anytime in the flight.

Sometime between January 1964 and summer 1965 he sold it to Richard Woodson. Woodson put it on its back on September 7, 1965 when a tail wheel spring let loose, causing a ground loop etc. Woodson put the aircraft in storage.

Ownership History

Ryan School of Aeronautics, San Diego, California;

Marshall Flying Service, Ft. Worth, Texas;

Earl C. Henry, Blackwell, Oklahoma;

Roy W. Turner, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;

Richard Woodson, Conroe, Texas; 

Howard Harder, Jeff Thomas, Arlington, Washington;

Bill Plecenik, Erwinna, Pennsylvania

Current Ownership

Bill Plecenik

Notes

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