L-5 "Nuts to You" Toledo Wing

UNDERGOING REPAIR In 1940, Gen. George S. Patton purchased a small aircraft called a Stinson Voyager. He used the aircraft extensively in Ft. Benning Georgia to keep an eye on training of his armored brigade. Due to the Voyager’s ability to operate where most aircraft couldn’t, Gen. Patton was able to be everywhere at once. Something he never could have accomplished in a command car. Patton’s use of the Voyager paved the way for liaison aircraft also known as "L-Birds" and “Flying Jeeps”. The first liaison airplane specifically built for the army was the Stinson L-5 Sentinel. Beginning in 1942, the L-5 was utilized in every theater of war providing courier service between Army headquarters and the front lines. It ferried mail, evacuated wounded from jungle airfields, and carried supplies to groups isolated behind enemy lines. General George S. Patton used L-5’s extensively in Tunisia, Sicily, and on his march to Germany. He was later quoted as saying, “Without the close co-operation of General O. P. Weyland’s XIX Tactical Air Command, we wouldn’t have dared to leave our flanks hanging in the air, deep in Nazi territory, and our drive might have been stopped far short of the German frontier.”