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Ohio Man Kept Secret WWII Warplane Collection In His Backyard (17 PHOTOS)
Nearly a decade after the Second World War drew to a close, a scrapyard worker in Ohio began diligently collecting surplus WWII warplanes and adding them to his personal backyard graveyard.
Walter Soplata never saw combat, but that was only because he was disqualified for service due to his stutter. So instead he worked as a scrapyard worker, and after the War he saw an endless supply of warplanes being dismantled and discarded. In 1947 he decided to give some of the flying relics a better resting place, Huffington Post reports.
Soplata managed to rack up quite a list of aircraft, including a B-25, a Vultee BT-15 Trainer, a Goodyear FG-1D Corsair with an experimental engine, and a Fairchild C-82 Boxcar fuselage that his kids used as a clubhouse.
Soplata paid around $1,000 a piece and by the time the 80’s rolled around, he’d decided his collection was complete.
The scrapyard collector passed away several years back, but his family has maintained the warplanes in his absence. While the graveyard’s exact location has been kept a secret, photographer Johnny Joo was given permission to snap a few photographs.
[ Huffington Post ]
The post Ohio man kept secret WWII warplane collection in his backyard (17 PHOTOS) appeared first on Guns.com.
Source: http://www.guns.com/2014/06/06/ohio-man-kept-secret-wwii-warplane-collection-in-his-backyard-17-photos/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ohio-man-kept-secret-wwii-warplane-collection-in-his-backyard-17-photos
Hardy a “secret”. The collection was fetured in the AMA’s “Model Aviation” magazine several decades ago. He had several rare types, including one of Cook Cleland’s racing F2G Corsairs, an O-52, B-36, Vought F7U Cutlass, among others.
As far as I know my grandmother does not want anyone coming over and taking pictures. I guess Johnny Joo cannot read the no trespassing signs. At this time whoever let him in did not respect the wishes of the family. I will probably go there tomorrow and cut the grass on my day off work.
Mow the grass? Here is an idea, why dont you set fire to all of that junk and clean that place up?
Looks like a bad episode of “Hoarders”.
Why do you care? Apparantly no one there is offended by the site.
If that’s maintaining the airplanes, I’d hate to see what they looked like if they didn’t maintain them. Poor things.