Published: November 23, 2009 11:26 pm      

FEATURES: Quest for the Cobra

Restoration expert is looking for a Niagara Falls-made racing aircraft that crashed into Lake Ontario in 1946.

It was a beautiful summer day when the Bell P-39 Airacobra crashed just off the shore of Lake Ontario.

According to flight records, some picnickers watched, most likely in horror, as the small aircraft, racing across the sky, went careening toward the blue waters and then hit the lake’s surface with a loud roar.

The date was August 30, 1946, and Jack Woolams, a test pilot for Bell Aircraft, had been planning to race the plane in a national competition in Cleveland for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. But he had been unhappy with its speed and had returned to the craft’s home field just outside of Niagara Falls to change engines and hopefully get more speed. It was a fatal decision.

The plane experienced mechanical problems as Woolams was streaking across the sky at about 300 miles per hour. For reasons still unknown, the plane suddenly faltered and fell from the sky like a meteorite in flames.

Truman Partridge was only about 14 years old at the time, born in Lyndonville, but living in Hornell, already in love with airplanes which he had been sketching since he was old enough to make circles and lines with his pencil. Whatever he was doing on that beautiful summer day, he surely couldn’t have known that the fate of the plane would somehow become so important to him in his retirement years, and its disappearance part of a quest of sorts for his later years, daring him to figure out its mysteries.

These days Partridge is seeking the remains of the plane, hoping to gather up its pieces and restore it to its original glory for the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum which was once located in downtown Niagara Falls, now located in Buffalo. There is a dive team planning to comb the lake bed seeking the parts of the plane, but first Partridge is hoping to dredge up information about exactly where the plane went down.

Partridge is seeking anyone who might have been picnicking by the waterfront that day who might still have memories of the crash. He wonders if perhaps somebody’s grandparents passed down stories of the horrific crash, which occurred somewhere between Youngstown and Wilson.

If the plane is ever found, Partridge, who worked a decade for Bell Aircraft as a aviation artist before he began a career as a middle school art teacher in Angola, is ready to begin restoration. He has already restored one P-39, also built by Bell Aircraft. That plane, nicknamed Snooks II, was recovered from Southwest Pacific and eventually, after restoration, landed at the Buffalo Naval and Military Park.

Because of that work, a team seeking to recover Woolams plane for the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum contacted Partridge, a museum board volunteer.

“They knew I was involved with the P-39 Airacobra,” he said. “I also have a pretty extensive aviation library.” 

The request to help find the plane appealed to Partridge’s lifelong love of airplanes, especially the old planes. He quickly agreed to do what he could.

Once he began his search for the plane he contacted all the federal agencies he could think of that could give him more information about the crash that occurred on that summer day. No one could help him. Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration told him, curiously, that the agency destroys all records after five years. Just recently, out of nowhere, he got a letter from the National Archives with some clues about the mysterious crash of the Cobra II.

“Yesterday, I got another letter them. There were copies of two pages of daily reports from the Niagara Coast Guard station right there at the mouth of the Niagara River,” Partridge said.

Unfortunately, The Coast Guard record keeper had pretty miserable handwriting, but as near as Partridge could figure, the letter revealed some clarifying information that helped him more closely pinpoint the location where the plane had crashed into the lake.

It may or may not lead to the recovery of the plane, but it surely gives Partridge and his team hope they can recover what is left of the lost craft when they begin searching the lake bottom in the spring.

He is now seeking to hone in on the location even further, which is why he is seeking assistance from anyone who might know more, maybe someone who was a child then but an adult now, so the team can get even closer

So far, in his quest, there are just puzzle pieces to assemble. “I do have a picture of the pilot standing on the wing of the plane,” he said. He also has clippings about the incident which appeared in Buffalo and Toronto newspapers in the week following the crash.

In the meantime, he will wait for spring when the recovery efforts are expected to begin. He has other projects to work on including assistance he is providing to those who are attempting to save the few remaining P-39s around the world.

“Right now there are only two P-39s in the whole world that are capable of flying,” he said. “One is down in Texas with commemorative airforce, the other one is in England, but has been purchased by a Texas oilman for his little private air force.”

When asked what motivates him to assist with the location and restoration of the Niagara Falls made P-39s, he said simply, “I just like airplanes ... and I think I am preserving a piece of history.”