laststandonzombieisland

While cruising around Gulfport, something caught my eye and I had to stop. After all, it is not often that you see a 50-year old Cessna mating with a building.

The plane and building (the latter an old Rooms To Go outlet now owned by the city) is set to be folded into the Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum, a project that the Brown Condor Association and others have been trying to establish since 2016.

Incidentally, the association is named in honor of Mississippi pilot John Charles Robinson, known in the media of the 1930s as “The Brown Condor of Ethiopia.” Tom Simmons wrote a book about Robinson, and I spoke to him about it at a local event and picked up a copy a while back. Good stuff.

As far as the C-336 goes, just 195 of these models, with twin Continental IO-360-A engines, were produced.

When supped up with Continental IO-360-Cs (which made them C-337s), the model flew as the O-2 Skymaster throughout the 1960s and 70s, as well as Reims Cessna FTB337 used in Rhodesia and throughout African brush wars into the 1980s, in all being used by the militaries of more than 20 countries, some as late as just a few years ago.

It will be interesting to see what form this 336 will take when the museum opens, which is expected sometime next year.