AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 65 / 156

Plate 65 of 156 · Second World War · Liaison and artillery-spotting monoplane

Piper L-4H Grasshopper

L-4H Grasshopper, painted as 43-29854 (G-BMKC), the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar’s Piper L-4H Grasshopper, built at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1943 and delivered to the US Army Air Forces in January 1944, later F-BFBA with the Aéroclub de Falaise from 1950 and on the British register since 1986: the military J-3 Cub, a two-seat, high-wing liaison and artillery-spotting monoplane of 35 ft 3 in span with a 65 hp Continental flat-four, its cylinder heads exposed either side of the cowling, a cabin glazed at the sides, rear and roof, V-struts braced by jury struts, a split side door and bungee-sprung main gear, shown standing on its tailwheel as it is flown there: olive drab overall, white and black invasion stripes round the rear fuselage and beneath the wings, star-and-bar insignia with a blue surround on the fuselage and wings, ‘44’ and ‘R’ codes either side of the stripes, the 381st Bomb Group’s red fin, black triangle and white ‘L’ above ‘329854’, ‘Little Rock-ette’ nose art on the starboard side and a yellow wooden propeller.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 43-29854 (G-BMKC), the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar’s Piper L-4H Grasshopper, built at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1943 and delivered to the US Army Air Forces in January 1944, later F-BFBA with the Aéroclub de Falaise from 1950 and on the British register since 1986: the military J-3 Cub, a two-seat, high-wing liaison and artillery-spotting monoplane of 35 ft 3 in span with a 65 hp Continental flat-four, its cylinder heads exposed either side of the cowling, a cabin glazed at the sides, rear and roof, V-struts braced by jury struts, a split side door and bungee-sprung main gear, shown standing on its tailwheel as it is flown there: olive drab overall, white and black invasion stripes round the rear fuselage and beneath the wings, star-and-bar insignia with a blue surround on the fuselage and wings, ‘44’ and ‘R’ codes either side of the stripes, the 381st Bomb Group’s red fin, black triangle and white ‘L’ above ‘329854’, ‘Little Rock-ette’ nose art on the starboard side and a yellow wooden propeller. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (871 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the L-4H Grasshopper modelled here.

History

The Cub

The Cub began as the Taylor E-2 of 1930, a simple two-seat high-wing monoplane designed by C. Gilbert Taylor at Bradford, Pennsylvania, and backed by a local oil man, William T. Piper. Taylor left the firm in the mid-1930s, and after a fire destroyed the Bradford factory in 1937 the company moved to an old silk mill at Lock Haven and took Piper’s name. Walter Jamouneau reworked the design as the J-2 and then, in 1938, the J-3 Cub: a steel-tube fuselage and wooden-spar wings covered in fabric, two seats one behind the other, a small flat-four engine with its cylinder heads poking out of the cowling, and a price of about $1,000. Painted in what became known as Cub Yellow, it was cheap to buy, cheap to fly and very forgiving, and it trained a large share of the pilots who passed through the Civilian Pilot Training Program from 1939.

In the US Army’s great manoeuvres of 1941, Piper, Taylorcraft and Aeronca lent light aircraft to show that they could carry an artillery observer, land in a pasture and hide under trees. The Army bought Cubs as the O-59, renamed L-4 in 1942, and that June the Field Artillery was given its own air observation posts, flown by artillery officers who directed the guns by radio. Soldiers called them Grasshoppers. The military Cub had a glazed cabin roof and rear windows so the observer could see up and behind, and a radio behind the seats. L-4s first went into action in North Africa in November 1942, when three flew off the carrier USS Ranger, and from then on they spotted for the guns, carried messages and commanders, laid telephone wire and flew out wounded men from Italy to the Rhine and across the Pacific.

More than 5,000 L-4s were built in several versions, the L-4H being the most numerous, out of some 20,000 J-3 and L-4 Cubs in all. Major Charles Carpenter of the 4th Armored Division fitted six bazookas to his L-4H, Rosie the Rocketer, and was credited with knocking out several German tanks and armoured cars in the autumn of 1944. After the war many L-4s left in Europe were sold to flying clubs, especially in France, and a large number still fly. The design carried on as the Super Cub, which Piper built until 1994.

This airframe

Piper L-4H Grasshopper 43-29854 (G-BMKC)

43-29854The airframe modelled

43-29854 was built at Lock Haven in 1943 and delivered to the US Army Air Forces on 7 January 1944. It was shipped from Newark, New Jersey, reached England on 22 January, joined the Eighth Air Force in February and passed to the Army Ground Forces on 3 March 1944, possibly with Patton’s Third Army; it later went to the Ninth Air Force and was struck off US charge in June 1947. On 8 November 1950 it joined the Aéroclub de Falaise in Normandy as F-BFBA. It came to Britain in 1986 as G-BMKC, still with its original Continental A-65 engine, crashed on take-off at Exeter in 1987, and was rebuilt and flown in Cornwall, Northern Ireland and Derby before it joined the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar in 2011, where it still flies. The model shows it as photographed there since 2015: olive drab all over, white and black invasion stripes round the rear fuselage and beneath the wings, star-and-bar insignia with a blue surround on both sides of the fuselage and under the starboard wing, “44” ahead of the stripes and “R” behind them, the red fin and rudder, black triangle and white “L” of the 381st Bomb Group from Ridgewell in Essex above “329854”, “Little Rock-ette” and a round badge on the starboard side of the nose, a blue shield badge and the Army data stencil to port, and a yellow wooden propeller. Every photograph of the wings is taken from below, so the upper surfaces are plain olive drab apart from the regulation star above the port wing, which no photograph shows, and the nose-art script is drawn in plain lettering.

See it at Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Cub in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 156 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.