The big silver plane parked in the open was the only valuable target within a few miles. Japanese bombers quickly used hundreds of machine gun bullets to screen the exposed Douglas DC-3. Hugh Woods, a CNAC pilot, is watching the game on a nearby hillside. A 100 kg bomb detonated under the right wing of his plane, his heart sank, and mud, grass and broken aluminum flew over Suifu Airport.

His crew and passengers are still alive and unharmed, but his precious plane is missing. With the wings broken, there is no chance of escape at all. More attackers will come back soon to complete this work. The best thing Woods and his men can do is to hide the injured airliner in the woods and use the radio to return to the base, hoping for a miracle.

In the spring of 1941, Douglas transport aircraft was almost invaluable in China. When CNAC's maintenance supervisor Zygmund “Sol” Soldinski received the news in Hong Kong, he thought it was time to start drinking. When Sol drank a few glasses of White Horse Whiskey, he discussed the issue with managing director PY Wong.

China does not have spare DC-3 wings. It will take several months for Douglas Aircraft Company to build another one. Then they could not transport it, at least not on American ships. There is legislation in wartime. Even if they have a wing and they are in Hong Kong, how can they take it to a remote place of 860 miles? Use the boat first, then the truck? There seems to be no feasible way to accomplish this task.

Passing through the CNAC hangar, Soldinski approached a group of mechanics who were overhauling Douglas DC-2. When he suddenly asked these people if the DC-2 wing could be installed on the DC-3, they stared at him blankly, speechless. The grumpy old Thor finally went mad.

But when they measured, calculated, and experimented, they soon discovered that Sol had good instincts even if he was a little drunk. The frugal Donald Douglas and his engineers have actually used the DC-2 wing and center section butt plate fixtures for their newer DC-3. This is not a perfect fit, but it will work. Assuming the repaired aircraft can fly safely, the replacement wing is nearly 5 feet shorter than the original.

Regrouping, they made a plan to suspend the spare wing under the abdomen of the CNAC DC-2, with the tip pointing backward. The crew built a temporary fairing over the exposed wing dock to maximize aerodynamic flow under abnormal loads.

When the replaced wing finally arrived in Suif, the crew spent a few days repairing the DC-3, dismantling its mutilated right wing, and installing the new wing in place with the help of gaskets, newly drilled holes and more. . All this time, these people have been watching the sky, hoping that the Japanese will not appear again to disrupt their work.

Although it seemed hopeless at first, Thor's bold plan succeeded. CNAC pilot Hal Sweet took off on the battered bird and reported that it flew very well, even though the plane was constantly taxiing to the side like a severely misaligned car. After arriving in Hong Kong safely, the AVIC mechanics took a few photos of the aircraft they dubbed "DC-2½" before starting the long aircraft maintenance work.

This strange adventure in China is by no means the only example of an airplane built with two or more fuselages. The battle of World War II resulted in many strange hybrids made of parts.

Two halves form a whole

In the U.S. bombing operations in Europe, the Eighth Air Force needed every fighter it could get, which usually meant overhauling heavily damaged bombers. In October 1944, a B-17G nicknamed "Little Mischief" absorbed the devastating explosion of a German 88mm missile over Cologne. When the bomber returned safely to the home airport of the 91st Bomber Group in Basingborn, it left a huge maintenance job for the ground crew. The nose and wings of the little mischief girl were barely moved, but the rear fuselage, ball turret, and waist area were a mess. In order for the bomber to resume operations, the ground crew went to purchase a donated aircraft.

They found what they needed at a rescue station about 25 miles north. In April 1944, the Wallaroo Mark II of the 303rd Bomber Group encountered an anti-aircraft shell explosion near the nose during a mission over Berlin, and then the main landing gear collapsed in August of the following year. Most of the B-17's tail is unharmed and will be the perfect donor for the little prankster.

More than 40 days later, personnel at Substation 441 in Basingborn connected the Wallaroo tail wing manufactured by Boeing to the Little Miss Mischief front wing manufactured by the Lockheed subsidiary in the rest area behind the wing. There, the factory has Connect to the two halves. They also used parts from 13 other aircraft, replacing the fairing, wing panels, and the vertical tail of the bomber. The result was amazing: the first half—the little prank—was bare metal, and the second half—Vararu—was painted in a gray faded olive color.

Miss Mischievous is not the only bomber to be made into a Franken aircraft; due to a shortage of spare parts, American maintenance personnel often demolish the aircraft. In the European theater, the average life time of a U.S. Army Aviation Heavy bomber is 215 days, of which approximately 49 days are in the repair, maintenance, or modification phase.

When the B-17G assigned to the 457th Bomber Group was crushed in a ground collision with another B-17 in July 1944, the olive-colored aircraft received a salvaged bare back. The crew named the mismatched aircraft Arf n'Arf, a popular drink that is half pale and half bitter.

Arf n'Arf performed the mission until November 8, 1944, when bad weather cancelled the bombing attack and the aircraft had already flown towards Germany. When the formation turned west, another B-17 collided with Arf n'Arf and its propeller cut into the abdomen of the bomber. The patchwork plane crashed into the North Sea and was split in two almost where it was connected a few months ago. There are no survivors.

The most famous Franken aircraft was deliberately built to look like a homemade mess. In the 1964 novel "Flight of the Phoenix," 12 people stranded in the Libyan desert used the wreckage of their crashed Fairchild C-82 Packet cargo plane to build a new plane. For the 1965 film, the producer asked California-based Tallmantz Aviation to provide a projectile plane.

The body and tail of the self-made machine are made of steel pipe and plywood, and the shape looks like a fictitious C-82 salvage boom of Alacco. The wing is taken from the discontinued Beechcraft C-45, and the tail wheel is from the North American L-17 Navion. The builder rescued the engine, fairing and propeller from the North American T-6 trainer aircraft. This one-of-a-kind aircraft was inspected and deemed airworthy, and was named Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 in FAA documents.

When the main pilot Frank Tallman was sidelined due to injury, his Tallmantz Aviation partner took over. Paul Mantz is an outstanding film pilot, air racer and aviation consultant with more than 25,000 hours of flying experience.

On July 8, 1965, while filming in the hot Buttercup Valley in Arizona, Manz and stuntman Bobby Rose swooped down the Phoenix just a few feet from the desert floor. Shots taken from multiple camera angles will be edited to look like the final victory takeoff for the survivors who have been stranded.

During the second flight, the plane stabilized, taxiing and hitting the sand heavily. Accompanied by the turbulence, the Phoenix's tail drooped and then broke free. The broken wings and cockpit of the plane tilted forward, and then rolled down into the rocks and sand. Rose was badly injured, but survived. Manz was killed by the rolling wreckage.

In August 1969, terrorists built one of the largest Franken aircraft in the world. When the members of the Palestine People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine learned that the then Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yitzhak Rabin, would take TWA flight 840, they made a plan to hijack Boeing 707-331B.

Rabin was not on the flight from Rome to Tel Aviv; but an American diplomat, along with 94 other passengers and 12 crew members. The terrorists ordered the pilots to land at Damascus International Airport; after evacuating the passengers from the plane, they detonated a bomb on the nose of the Airbus, causing US$4 million in damage.

After the Syrian authorities took control of the scene, TWA adjusters and executives began to find a way to save the plane.

After a thorough inspection, Boeing technicians pointed out that most of the jumbo jet was unharmed. The exception is "Part 41", the cockpit and nose, which was almost torn apart beyond recognition.

For many years, there have been rumors that TWA had obtained a donated nose from the wreckage of a BOAC airliner that had suffered severe fire damage. In fact, TWA reached an agreement with Boeing to supply fresh nose parts from the factory directly from the assembly line in Renton, Washington. With the help of Aero Spacelines' Mini Guppy, the huge "spare parts" occupies almost all the parts in front of the 707's front passenger window. In Syria, a 58-person crew worked for several weeks to send the injured 707 back into the air.

In the years after the hijacking, passengers and even many TWA crews did not know that they were flying on a Franken aircraft that had undergone extensive maintenance. Airline officials quietly changed the 707's registration to eliminate the most obvious signs of life-saving operations on the plane in the Middle East. After thousands of passenger flights, TWA finally retired the aircraft in March 1980. But even if the airliner as a whole ceases to exist, part of it continues to fly. Sold to the military spare parts program, parts of the 707 have flown for decades as part of the U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker.

The Guppy that delivered the nose part to TWA Flight 840 was also a Franken aircraft. In the 1960s, Aero Spacelines, Inc. acquired and extensively modified a series of retired Boeing 377 passenger planes and C-97 cargo planes, the sole purpose of which was to transport large amounts of cargo by air. As the name of Spacelines implies, one of the company's largest customers is NASA.

A total of eight strange-looking airplanes—a pregnant guppies, five super guppies, and two mini guppies—carry a large number of Gemini and Apollo rockets, space capsules and probes, and other things that require rapid and rapid peace. Careful delivery of large and delicate items.

Each type of guppy is different, but they all have a larger upper body with a detachable tail or hinged nose to accommodate the most massive objects. The first Guppy was built by the decommissioned Pan Am 377, which lengthened the fuselage of a scrapped BOAC Stratocruiser.

Some subsequent aircraft used new engines removed (and inverted) from the Boeing 707, improved tail and wings, and nose gear components. This is the last Guppy model, a Mini Guppy called Spirit of Santa Barbara, which was delivered to the factory-the new nose of the bomb-damaged TWA airliner stranded in Syria.

There is no similar product that finds more aircraft parts in the air racing community. One of the most famous Franken plane racers has not yet been completed, but these plans are as bold as the career of a dream racer.

Former SR-71 test pilot and air competition champion Darryl Greenamyer put together his 1977 world speed record holder F-104 Red Baron with pieces of at least six star fighters. Greenamyer's last project is Shockwave, and he hopes that this infinite race car can break the current speed record for piston-powered airplanes.

Shockwave's fuselage has a scratch-built fuselage and wing center, which matches the outer wing of the Hawker Sea Fury fighter during World War II and the tail wing of the North American F-86 fighter jet of the jet age. This one-of-a-kind machine may one day scream overhead at more than 600 miles per hour. It is powered by a huge 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engine, which can generate 5,000 horsepower.

Sadly, when Greenamyer passed away in October 2018, this groundbreaking but extremely expensive project had not yet been completed. Shockwave was later sold to an undisclosed buyer; it is now languishing in a hangar. We wait for the day when it finally roars into the sky.

This story is selected from the February/March issue of "Aviation and Space" magazine

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Cory Graff is an aviation museum curator, exhibition developer, and author of 10 books. His most recent aviation titles include P-51 Mustang: 75 Years of America's Most Famous Warbird, Zenith Press, 2015.

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