This is an excerpt from the feature story by Jim Busha in the August issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine. Complimentary copies are available at multiple locations around the grounds. At press time, Rosie the Rocketer was expected to be displayed at AirVenture Oshkosh 2023, barring any weather or other issues.
When it comes to finding hidden treasures, sometimes the best place to look is right under your nose. Case in point was the discovery of a true combat legend, a modern David that once faced down a series of enemy Goliaths if you will — and it promises to be one of the most interesting warbirds at this year’s EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.
After reading a story about the exploits of Maj. Charles “Bazooka Charlie” Carpenter and his unusually armed Piper L-4H Cub named Rosie the Rocketer in a 2016 EAA Warbirds magazine article written by Maj. Carpenter’s daughter, Carol (Carpenter) Apacki, Joe Scheil, EAA 1109238, who is an airline pilot by day and serial number sleuth by night, discovered that this killer Cub, bearing serial No. 11717, was hanging from a ceiling in an Austrian aviation museum.
Joe contacted his good friend Rob Collings of the Collings Foundation who had been looking for a documented European theater combat aircraft. That set the wheels in motion as Rob traveled to Austria to verify for himself that the Cub had survived. Rob and Joe found out that after the war, the Cub had been surplused in a German yard in September 1946.
From there, L-4H 11717 became HB-OBK with Heinz Wullschleger of Olten, Switzerland, and then moved to Austria in 1955. By April 1956, sporting yellow Piper Cub colors, the registration changed to OE-AAB when it became part of the Österreichischer Aero Club in Vienna where it towed gliders.
The airplane flew as a civilian airplane for a number of years before it disappeared into the Österreichisches Luftfahrtmuseum at Graz Airport in Austria in 1976.
In late 2018 Rob was able to convince the museum to sell the Cub to him. Loaded in a shipping container, it made its journey back home and eventually found its way into the caring arms of Colin Powers, EAA 65696, of Oregon who had a string of award-winning L-4 restorations under his belt.
Colin got the airplane on January 8, 2019.
“It was a mess as far as I was concerned,” he said. “The museum in Austria had acquired the airplane as a static representation. It had been used as a glider tug after the war. The fuselage was covered with a variety of stickers and decals all over it. They went ahead and stripped all the fabric off of it and slapped fabric back on it and painted it yellow. It didn’t look very pretty.”
Colin wanted to strip it down to bare wood and tubes as soon as he could. The reason? He wanted to verify the rumors and check it over to see if there were any bullet holes or other combat damage.
“I did find a very obvious bullet hole in the right wing,” Colin said. Besides combat damage, Colin also found some signatures and dates from Piper employees on some interior wood surfaces and wing spars. All the combat damage and personal notes have been preserved during the restoration.
Colin’s restoration marching orders from Rob were simple — bring it back to look exactly like it did in 1944. Colin knew there were plenty of replica parts available for Cubs, but he focused on finding original Piper parts.
According to Colin, probably the biggest challenge to the entire restoration was the manufacturing and mounting of the six bazookas. That was the one item that was not well documented as to placement and firing mechanism inside the cockpit.
“From my research of old photos and wartime newspaper clippings, I found that they apparently were mounted on a piece of plywood on the wing strut,” Colin said. “We didn’t have very good documentation on how that was built and what they used, so we had to fly by the seat of our pants on that one. I think the results speak for themselves, and they turned out like the photographs show.”
The replica M1A1 bazooka tubes are mounted up at an angle between 20 and 25 degrees. The firing panel with six toggle switches — three for each wing — is located on the upper left side of the wing channel, just above the pilot’s shoulder.
“It gives me a lot of pride that I was asked to perform this restoration,” Colin said. “But I can’t take all the credit. The reproduction of the nose art of Rosie the Rocketer was hand painted by Carol’s daughter, Erin Pata, in the exact location her grandfather had it painted 75 years earlier. To be able to do this and see it take to the skies again — not only for the Collings Foundation but for the Carpenter family — is one of my greatest honors.”
When the hostilities ceased in Europe in May 1945, many liaison aircraft remained and were scrapped or sold as surplus because it wasn’t cost-effective to send them back to the United States. All that was believed to have remained of the olive drab Piper L-4H Rosie the Rocketer were faded black and white photos and old newspaper clippings. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and the resilience of one valiant Piper L-4 and its pilot’s heroic exploits will forever live on.