Planes of Fame’s Airacomet was the seventh of 13 pre-production test aircraft built. It is the second oldest surviving example, with only the Smithsonian’s XP-59A 42-108784 being older. The aircraft was flight tested at Muroc Army Airfield (now Edwards AFB), California. At one point, it was among four prototype P-59s modified with an open cockpit observer’s seat in front of the pilot’s cockpit with a small windscreen in front. While the two XP-59As used their cockpits to fly dignitaries and other personnel on their first jet flights, the two modified YP-59As (42-108777 and 42-108783) were employed as mother ships for unmanned, radio-controlled P-59s flight performance experiments between late 1944 and early 1945 in a joint Bell/Sperry program at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Takeoffs and landings would be guided by a ground controller seated atop a truck while the mother ship would control the drone during all other stages of the flight except landing.
After these experiments were completed, 42-108777 was reassigned to the 412th Fighter Group, spending time in both the 445th Fighter Squadron (FS) and the 31st FS at several locations around California (Palmdale, March Field, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Santa Maria). It has been reported that pilots used 42-108777 to occasionally take base nurses and ground crew personnel on their first jet flights while at Santa Maria. At this point, a makeshift canopy was added to cover the observer’s cockpit. Following WWII, 42-108777 was sold as surplus. Like several other P-59s, it ended up as an instructional airframe with the California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo. However, unlike most Airacomets, which ended up in scrap yards following their usefulness, 42-108777 had a lucky escape when famed aircraft collector and historian, Edward T. Maloney, bought her for preservation at The Air Museum in Ontario, California. In the 1970s, the museum, renamed as the Planes of Fame Air Museum, had moved to nearby Chino. While the unusual observer’s cockpit and canopy remained in situ on the airframe into the 1980s, that was set to change when its airworthy restoration began during the early 1990s. The aircraft was missing many parts at the time, with replacements having to be found or re-fabricated. For example, the aircraft came without its J31 engines when first acquired, but soon after restoration commenced, the museum was able to acquire three examples in Texas which had originally been intended for the Ryan FR-1 Fireball program.
Many thanks indeed to Adam Estes for this article!
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Raised in Fullerton, California, Adam is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in History. Fascinated by aviation history from a young age, he has visited numerous air museums across the United States, including the National Air and Space Museum and the San Diego Air and Space Museum. He volunteers at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino as a docent and researcher, gaining hands-on experience with aircraft maintenance. Known for his encyclopedic knowledge of aviation history, he is particularly interested in the stories of individual aircraft and their postwar journeys. Active in online aviation communities, he shares his work widely and seeks further opportunities in the field.
My father flew 42-108777 on 31 Mar 1945. He flew other P59s with 445th at Santa Maria. We looked for it on a rumor and found it in the boneyard at Ontario around 1970. Just the fuselage but because it had the second cockpit, he said he remembered that he think he flew a buddy one day. His service records show XP 59A on that one day.
Oops, the typed copy is hard to read. It says YP 59A on 31 MAR and also on 5 APR.