Santa Maria 50 cal Machine Guns Found

[acenipplelicker]

About the Guns:
The .50 caliber machine guns displayed with this mount are non-operational. The two guns that are located on the gunners' left side are from a P-38 fighter aircraft that crashed in the local area during WWII. The two guns located on the gunners' right side are professionally manufactured models that were never designed to function as actual weapons. The .50 caliber ammunition used in this display is original in inert condition.

In referring back to the guns recovered from the P-38 fighter aircraft, allow me to describe historical events as I know them, relative to their recovery and restoration.

During WWII, a P-38 fighter aircraft from the Santa Maria Army Airbase was on a training flight east of Santa Maria over a mountainous undeveloped region, used mainly for cattle grazing. While executing training maneuvers, the aircraft crashed, and the pilot was killed. Due to the remote inaccessible area of the crash, no attempt was made to recover the plane. The pilot, who was killed in the crash was subsequently recovered by cowboys on horseback from a nearby ranch. The pilot was turned over to military officials.

Several years later, local residents found the crash site, noting the damaged aircraft to be more or less in tact. The guns, four .50 caliber Browning machine guns and one 20 mm cannon which were severely damaged in the crash, were subsequently removed for future restoration. Unfortunately, the 20 mm cannon was too heavy to carry by members of the recovery party, so it was left adjacent to the trail to be recovered at a later time. The cannon was never recovered.

The four machine guns were subsequently stored in an old garage with the intent that they were to be restored at some future time. As time and events passed, the guns were never restored, instead left to deteriorate.

Discovering the machine guns approximately 12 years ago, Mr. Kinney managed to acquire them in an effort to preserve their history. Notably two of the guns were restorable, the other two were damaged beyond the possibility of restoration and subsequently disposed of.

To comply with BATF regulations, the guns were completely stripped of all internal parts. A solid steel block was welded into the forward receiver area of each gun, and the right side plates were cut in two places, rendering the guns non-operational, and non-rebuild able. The guns essentially became non-guns, reconfigured for historical display purposes only.

The restoration process required that some of the damaged, original exterior parts be replaced with NOS (new original surplus) parts to maintain the original appearance of the guns. Also the metal surfaces were refinished by a process known as Parkerizing.

Hundreds of hours were devoted to this project in an effort to preserve WWII historical equipment for the benefit of all those who will visit this display.


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Lockheed P-38 Lightning
Aircraft model


The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a World War II American piston-engined fighter aircraft. Developed to a United States Army Air Corps requirement, the P-38 had distinctive twin booms and a central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament. Wikipedia

Top speed: 443 mph

Wingspan: 52′ 0″

Length: 38′

Cruise speed: 275 mph

Engine type: Allison V-1710

Unit cost: 97,147–97,147 USD (1944)

Manufacturer: Lockheed Corporation---------built to counter the Japanese zero which was a good aircraft.
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Caliber .50 inches (12.7mm)
Muzzle Velocity 2,930 feet per second
Effective Range 2500 yards
Rate of fire 1,600 - 2200 rounds per minute
Weight Approx 2400 pounds
Height (guns level 55 inches
Height (guns fully elevated) 75 inches
Length 6' 4.5"
width 6' 9"
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PICS BELOW

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[Jack Davenport]

I had a guy tell me that he owned a Haskins RAI 300 rifle.

Not sure that I believed him.

 

[xfire]

I read somewhere that the Japanese Zero was basically a design by Howard Hughes, subsequent research discredits that theory but I do believe the Hughes design was extremely influential to the model the Japanese put into production. At any rate, World War II produced some awe-inspiring military equipment.

 

[acenipplelicker]

the Japanese went with a very light and agile plane. if you could put bullets in it - you could shoot it down- it was hard to do

the American craft had protection around the fuel tank that was heavy making the craft less maneuverable.

 

[acenipplelicker]

I had a guy tell me that he owned a Haskins RAI 300 rifle.

Not sure that I believed him.

Myth busters were testing rifles about movies where a person shoots into a lake to shoot someone and found the high powered rounds were not as good as regular rifles- bullets came apart on impact with water.

They had a rifle about 6 ft long- which they said was the biggest caliber and shot it in a pool from a tripod and the bullets did not impact the bottom.

 

[Mr. Daystar]

Myth busters were testing rifles about movies where a person shoots into a lake to shoot someone and found the high powered rounds were not as good as regular rifles- bullets came apart on impact with water.

They had a rifle about 6 ft long- which they said was the biggest caliber and shot it in a pool from a tripod and the bullets did not impact the bottom.

They used a Barrett .50BMG, a M1 Garand, which is a 30/06, and a couple of handguns. No firearm really does well in water...planes strafed the water because you had to come up for air, not because they could get you when you dove down a few feet,

At any rate, the P-38 is my favorite warbird from WWII, and my second overall. The F-4 Phantom, being number one.

As far as owning a Browning M1A2...or Ma Deuce, they're out there, if you can find one for sale, and you can get the tax stamp, and pass the background check, they carry a price tag that rivals the cost of a new four wheel drive truck.

 

[acenipplelicker]

Postwar operations[edit]-- My dad knew tony levier & levier helped choose area 51
The end of the war left the USAAF with thousands of P-38s rendered obsolete by the jet age. The last P-38s in service with the United States Air Force were retired in 1949.[91] A total of 100 late-model P-38L and F-5 Lightnings were acquired by Italy through an agreement dated April 1946. Delivered, after refurbishing, at the rate of one per month, they finally were all sent to the AMI by 1952. The Lightnings served in 4 Stormo and other units including 3 Stormo, flying reconnaissance over the Balkans, ground attack, naval cooperation and air superiority missions. Due to old engines, pilot errors and lack of experience in operating heavy fighters, a large number of P-38s were lost in at least 30 accidents, many of them fatal. Despite this, many Italian pilots liked the P-38 because of its excellent visibility on the ground and stability on takeoff. The Italian P-38s were phased out in 1956; none survived the scrapyard.[92]

Surplus P-38s were also used by other foreign air forces with 12 sold to Honduras and 15 retained by China. Six F-5s and two unarmed black two-seater P-38s were operated by the Dominican Air Force based in San Isidro Airbase, Dominican Republic in 1947. The majority of wartime Lightnings present in the continental U.S. at the end of the war were put up for sale for US$1,200 apiece; the rest were scrapped. P-38s in distant theaters of war were bulldozed into piles and abandoned or scrapped; very few avoided that fate.

The CIA "Liberation Air Force" flew one P-38M to support the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'etat. On 27 June 1954, this aircraft dropped napalm bombs that destroyed the British cargo ship SS Springfjord, which was loading Guatemalan cotton[93] and coffee[94] for Grace Line[95] in Puerto San José.[96] In 1957, five Honduran P-38s bombed and strafed a village occupied by Nicaraguan forces during a border dispute between these two countries concerning part of Gracias a Dios Department.[97]

P-38s were popular contenders in the air races from 1946 through 1949, with brightly colored Lightnings making screaming turns around the pylons at Reno and Cleveland. Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier was among those who bought a Lightning, choosing a P-38J model and painting it red to make it stand out as an air racer and stunt flyer. Lefty Gardner, former B-24 and B-17 pilot and associate of the Confederate Air Force, bought a mid-1944 P-38L-1-LO that had been modified into an F-5G. Gardner painted it white with red and blue trim and named it White Lightnin'; he reworked its turbo systems and intercoolers for optimum low-altitude performance and gave it P-38F style air intakes for better streamlining. White Lightnin' was severely damaged in a crash landing during an air show demonstration and was bought, restored and repainted with a brilliant chrome finish by the company that owns Red Bull. The aircraft is now located in Austria.

F-5s were bought by aerial survey companies and employed for mapping. From the 1950s on, the use of the Lightning steadily declined, and only a little more than two dozen still exist, with few still flying. One example is a P-38L owned by the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas, painted in the colors of Charles H. MacDonald's Putt Putt Maru. Two other examples are F-5Gs which were owned and operated by Kargl Aerial Surveys in 1946, and are now located in Chino, California at Yanks Air Museum, and in McMinnville, Oregon at Evergreen Aviation Museum.

 

[acenipplelicker]

I read somewhere that the Japanese Zero was basically a design by Howard Hughes, subsequent research discredits that theory but I do believe the Hughes design was extremely influential to the model the Japanese put into production. At any rate, World War II produced some awe-inspiring military equipment.

The constellation was a fast plane for its day and was a plane on the design boards at the beginning of ww2 and when pres Roosevelt ordered all companies to reveal their secret projects- the constellation was revealed

howard chose Lockheed to make it as it was at Burbank airport- he wanted it secret and all paper work went to a house in Burbank ca and the redactions were done by cutting words out of documents with razor blades

every one involved had a code name- howard hughes was" the pope"