Dave Southwood's memories of flying P-39 Airacobra 'Brooklyn BUM 2nd'

These articles have been pretty popular here in the past, so I thought I’d post a link to The Vintage Aviation Echo’s most recent writing – published to mark the digital publication’s fifth ‘birthday’.

The latest feature on the Echo offers Dave Southwood’s impressions of P-39 Airacobra ‘Brooklyn BUM 2nd’, a favourite of many aficionados when it was with TFC at Duxford (and I’m sure is similarly enjoyed by those who have had the opportunity to see it under Lewis Air Legends’ custodianship).

Link: https://vintageaviationecho.com/p-39-airacobra/

Intro: 

“I’ve got this mathematical theory that each year seems to go by more quickly because it’s a smaller percentage of your overall life”, says Dave Southwood. “By the time you’re 50, a year is 2 percent of your life. Some things you experienced years ago feel like they happened just yesterday.”

He’s been flying Second World War piston-engine fighters for more than 30 years. The first was Charles Church’s P-51D Mustang Susy, way back in 1988. He’s since flown warbirds for numerous UK-based operators, among them Hurricanes and Spitfires of various marks, P-51C Mustang, Buchón, Bf 109G ‘Black 6’, Hawk 75, P-40B, P-40C, P-40F and P-40M from the Curtiss fighter lineage, FG-1D and F4U-5 Corsairs, and Grummans Wildcat and Hellcat. Above all, The Fighter Collection’s (TFC) Bell P-39Q Airacobra Brooklyn BUM 2nd does, he says, “stand out for being so distinctly different – those particular memories still feel recent”.