On grounds of history (and speaking as a Canuck) I’d go with the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin IIIA/IIIDC. Faithful static airframes for a couple museums, and “lookalike” flyers (probably with R985s up front; same power rating) for the airshow circuit, a la the numerous WWI “facsimiles” out there.

On grounds of sentiment and charisma, without question the beautiful deHavilland 103 Hornet/Sea Hornet. A run of six or eight of these a la the Me262s would emerge, a couple statics and several flyers (a Sea Hornet NF.21, say, would look very smart in formation with RNHF’s Fury…)

On grounds of what might actually be workable (and again speaking from a Canadian perspective), I’d go with the neat little Reid Rambler III, a Gipsy-engined Tiger Moth contemporary with a metal frame and Warren-truss wings. One of these competed in one of the King’s Cups in the 30s. I’ve long thought this would make a nice new-build project (like the Waco Classic)…

On historical grounds again, one complete, static, Stirling for RAFM would be nice.

And if a set of Viking/Valletta wings could be found, how about a flyable “neo-Wellington”, in the manner of Elvington’s Halifax?

S.

What a great thread…

CAvM at Rockcliffe have a Bleriot XI fuselage frame, beautifully restored but (like the D.VII) never finished. (Unlike the D.VII, the Bleriot has, despite being an unfinished project, been displayed…inventively, in imitation of a 1910 period photo where a group of people are pushing a Bleriot along the ground; lifesize cutouts of the figures in the photo were made and placed alongside the fuselage, “pushing” it along in the museum. Neat, but the airframe is now back in storage. I think CAvM may have the wing structure as well.)

S.

Daz–

Tom Dietrich and friends (the Tiger Boys) at Guelph still have the Hurricane project, but the biggest single piece is a Merlin engine, most of the rest being boxed-up in storage. I’ve seen the engine, which is kept in one of Tom’s hangars at Guelph Airpark. Hopefully another deep-pocketed partner will emerge to restart the Hurricane project…until then the Tiger Boys are keeping busy with various Moths, etc. (Tiger Moths, and also Tom’s personal Thruxton Jackaroo, being the origin of the Tiger Boys nickname)…

Cheers

S.

TT–

As the “who” listing on mustangsmustangs indicates, that Mustang was a “custom” job by the inimitable Bob Diemert in Manitoba. He did a few other interesting restorations too:

*an A6M-2 Zero with a Wright R2600 off a Mitchell, now at Pensacola
*another A6M-2 with a P&W R1830–more reasonable!–now in Hawaii
*a D3A-2 “Val” with an R2600, flew on the circuit as CF-TZT, now at Chino
*a Firefly AS.6 (CF-CBH) with a Merlin from a York and a six-seat aft cockpit
*a P-40 with a Merlin up front, a scratchbuilt fuselage, wings cobbled back together after being sawn apart for transport years before, and a tail section containing a mix of Harvard and Bolingbroke bits…!

All of the above aircraft actually flew–some of them rather well. The R1830 Zero, for instance, which is static now but used to fly with the Confederate AF, had a tremendous rate of climb. The Cyclone version apparently did too.

If you’ve never seen the early-eighties Canadian National Film Board documentary about Mr Diemert, called “The Defender”…you absolutely must. It plays like some sort of cut-rate rural, aeronautical twist on the “mockumentary” genre, eg. “Spinal Tap”…but these guys were dead serious about what they were trying to do. You will bust a gut laughing…

TP-39 is interesting too…but yeow, sure is ugly. Usually I like the dual control versions of WWII-era fighters, but that Cobra is just, well, wrong!

S.

Hi–

Bruce’ll know for sure, but the Mosquito Aircraft Museum had an ex-Norwegian B.E.2e airframe in its collection in the late 80s and may still. I think a second Norwegian B.E.2e survives in a museum in Norway as well.

The BE at Rockcliffe (Canada Aviation Museum/CAvM, formerly NAM) was long thought to be Lt. Sowrey’s Zeppelin killer, but during its rebuild in the late 80s/early 90s it was found to be a later, albeit similar, example, and it has been restored with its correct identity. The propeller installed, though, genuinely is from Sowrey’s machine, having been gifted by the family several decades ago. CAvM has quite a collection of WWI types, many of them original airframes (Snipe; SPAD; Nie.XII; D.VII; AEG G.IV; Junkers J.4 etc).

S.

Dustyone–

They’re not in a digital format (yet) but I do have a few shots of the mortal remains of the one-off Proctor 6, CF-EHF, when it was here in the Hamilton area about twenty years ago. Drop me a line and I’ll get them scanned to CD and email them to you if you like. The Proctor remains are apparently still held by the Wings Of Flight collection in Markham, Ontario.

That’s a fascinating snap of the “Proctuka” BTW…I think it’s the first shot I’ve seen showing the thing in the air…so it really could and did fly!

S.

Well, P/O Magee sort of died in a training accident–collided with an Oxford in cloud iirc. He was on Spits by that time.

Had never heard previously the reference to parts of “High Flight” having been borrowed. It would be interesting to hear more detail on that; such would not, though, change the moving quality of this famous little sonnet. Not for me, anyway. Quite a few times I heard Stu Holloway’s reading of it during (former Fw190 pilot) Oscar Boesch’s sublime sailplane routine. It never once failed to mist me right up…

S.

This was a takeoff crash in Italy, involving a 15th AF B-24M; six crew were killed. I remember the pic in a magazine feature years ago with part of the caption reading “…the stance of the bomb-laden aircraft is truly remarkable”. Not only was the accident on takeoff…the ill-fated Lib was loaded with ordnance. Six crew killed, yet the Lib did not explode; presumably the tail gunner survived, bit of a miracle. A vivid example of how ironic war can get…

S.