The Little World

As Kinky Friedman would say.

You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the progress on the Convair 440. I’ve got something entirely different to show you today. I would like to introduce Ol’ Gutless.

Ol’ Gutless is a gate guard for Stein’s Air World in Wet Dog, Alberta. She originally started life as a P-39 in the USAAF and was assigned to duty in Alaska in 1943. Flown to Montana, and then starting north to stage through Edmonton, Ol’ Gutless was a few gallons short of a tank when she hove up over the southern horizon and her pilot spotted a convenient RCAF transit station – RCAF Wet Dog. It was easy to make out the field because by now the propeller had stopped and the plane was pointed down towards the ground.

The pilot nearly made the end of the runway. Happily the crash crew could pull him out and bundle him off to the hospital, and eventually he continued his journey north on the Canadian Pacific railway, but they wouldn’t let him drive the locomotive. Ol’ Gutless was hauled out the back of the sewage lagoon and left for 70 years.

In 2013 Hughes Aerial Services were collecting scrap metal from around the perimeter of what had become Wet Dog Regional Airport and discovered Ol’ Gutless. With time on their hands and cold weather keeping their own survey planes grounded, the shop crew turned their hand to making something of the P-39.

Right from the start they knew she would not be a flyer any more – the engine had reverted to a solid block of metal and the rest of the airframe was being held together by the zinc chromate paint. So they decided to replace panel by panel with fibreglass, anchor a suitable pylon into the old engine mounts, and raise the plane up as a memorial. When the Canadian Department of Transport Safety Officer pointed out that she would be a memorial to a failed pre-flight check, they changed it to gate guard. And presented her to Mr. Stein at the Air World Museum.

What a wonderful present – now where to put her? Out the front of the road leading into Wet Dog Municipal? At the entrance to Air World? Back in the old sewage lagoon? The Air World committee is still debating the question but as soon as they come to a final decision we will show you photographs of ol’ Gutless in her new position.

Tomorrow back to the regularly scheduled program.