Jack great photo’s…thanks !

Thanks Jack !

Nice way to start off the week … great photo’s Jack, thanks so much for posting them…very nice !

BlueNoser352!

Sad news from USA airshow !

Don’t know if this has been reported here… very sad !
y prayers for this pilot and his family !

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070907/ap_on_re_us/air_show_crash

NORFOLK, Va. – The pilot of a civilian World War II stunt plane died Friday after the plane crashed while practicing just hours before an air show, officials said.

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Jan Wildbergh, the flight leader with the Skytypers Air Show Team, died following the crash at the Oceana Naval Air Station, team sponsor GEICO Insurance said in a statement.

Larry Arken, deputy squadron commander of the six-man team, said earlier that the pilots had just finished rehearsing their routine at the Virginia Beach base and were coming in for a landing when the No. 6 plane, the last in the formation, crashed.

Arken was flying first, so he did not see the plane go down. But he said he heard from witnesses that the plane flew into the ground while still under its own power, he told The Associated Press from Oceana when reached on his cell phone.

Wildbergh trained with the Dutch Air Force, for which he flew first-generation jet fighters during the Cold War, the GEICO statement said. He moved to the U.S. to pilot private aircraft, ran a flight school and joined Skytypers in 1986.

The crash was being investigated, base spokesman Troy Snead said. The base was not open to the public when the plane crashed about noon, but some invited guests were watching the practice, Snead said.

The plane had no ejection system, and the pilot was flying too low to use his parachute, team spokesman Ralph Roberts told WAVY-TV in Portsmouth.

“He probably tried to continue to make the maneuver and save the plane, possibly by doing a belly flop,” Roberts said.

The Skytypers Air Show Team performs at shows across the country, often doing low-level flying maneuvers and creating aerial smoke messages, called skytyping, according to its Web site. A computer in the lead plane sends radio signals to the others to coordinate puffs of smoke to form words while the planes fly about 250 feet apart.

The New York City-based team consists of six SNJ-2 planes, which were used to train Allied pilots in World War II. Only about 10 of them are left in the world, according to the Web site, which says the team is the “only World War II civilian squadron flying today.”

The annual three-day air show, sponsored by the Navy, was still scheduled to begin Friday evening, Snead said. About 250,000 people are expected for exhibits and aerial performers including the Blue Angels, the Navy’s precision flying team.

___

On the Net:

GEICO Skytypers: http://www.geicoskytypers.com/

Oceana air show: http://www.oceanaairshow.com/index.php

BBC Documentary BBMF !!!

Found this link on the BBC website…looks like a good program !

Thanks

BlueNoser352!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/05_may/03/flight.shtml

Category: Yorks & N.Midlands TV; E.Yorks & Lincs TV; E.Midlands TV
Date: 03.05.2007
Printable version

The Lancaster bomber, Hurricane and Spitfire aeroplanes are the spectacular stars of a special BBC documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of Lincolnshire’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

The Flight (BBC One in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and East Midlands, 7.30pm, Friday 4 May 2007) charts the pride and passion of the team based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire who work on and fly the historic planes at air shows around the country.

The half-hour film, a year in the making, includes interviews with pilots, engineers and war veterans plus exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the organisation behind the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight over London last year.

This highlight of the flying season took months of preparation. The Flight reveals for the first time that the pilots flying the Hurricane and Spitfire in the flypast agreed to risk their lives in an emergency rather than bale out over the capital.

Their plan was to “ditch” in the Thames if the 60-year-old engines powering their venerable warplanes failed over the capital.

“It has potential to have lethal consequences as these aircraft do not ditch well,” admits Squadron Leader Al Pinner.

In another remarkable sequence, a highly-qualified instructor who teaches pilots to fly the RAF’s new Typhoon Eurofighter struggles to land a Forties vintage Hurricane, bouncing on landing and having to take off again to prevent a crash landing.

As well as the Queen’s flypast, the team took part in more than 400 events during the year and they talk emotionally on camera about the pride, elation and honour of flying such priceless artefacts of the nation’s heritage.

They also pay glowing tribute to the heroism of the teenage pilots who actually flew the planes in the Second World War.

AB2

Two great hours tonight !

BlueNoser352 here…. watched two hours of great aviation history tonight on the second season of Dogfights. Frist hour in the pacific as US ships delt with the first recoreded Kamikaze attacks and the second hour a great hour on a special German Luftwaffe group designed to ram their Me-109’s into US Bombers. Great computer graphics with these two programs…..! First season already out on DVD here ! Hope they have one on pilots from the 352nd this season.

Dogfights: Kamikaze
It was a weapon conceived in desperation yet horrifying in its destructive power–young Japanese pilots willing to turn themselves into human bombs to attack the US fleet in the Pacific. Witness the first organized kamikaze attack in history on October 25, 1944. In brutal fashion, a US escort carrier is sunk, and a survivor re-lives the terrifying scene. At the same time, the Japanese unveil an even more sinister suicide weapon: the rocket-powered Okha. A Japanese Okha veteran describes the training and mindset of a suicide pilot, and US Navy veterans onboard ships struck by Ohkas, tell the enormous devastation this “flying torpedo” could unleash. Then, we’ll explore another desperation tactic–this one in Germany. In the face of the wholesale destruction of their homeland, young Germans were motivated to destroy American bombers by any means necessary, including using their own aircraft as battering rams.