Corsair166bOh, you meant UK based Corsairs…my bad. Well, if it makes you feel any better, Jim Read’s -5 model is doing fine after its Oshkosh accident, thank you, and i saw it at the Corsair gathering last year and at Oshkosh this year, both times flown by Dale Snodgrass, who flies a Corsair like Paul Bonhomme flies the Mk. 14 Spit-fast and furious and incredibly well…fun to see.
I think Lindsay Walton’s went to Brian Reynolds, but i could be wrong….saw a picture of it in a tent, it is now in plain American markings (totally wrong for a dash 7 model) with only stars and bars and the letter R on the tail…very dull. Should have kept it French Suez…looked Great then…
Mark
Corsair166bUm, if memory serves, you still also have Christophe Jacquard’s dash 4 Corsair in France, and I believe an F4U-5 over there also, unless I missed something….and then you have Siegfried Angerer’s in Austria, another dash 4….
The former Paul Morgan Corsair that got picked up by the Cavanaugh folks had a slight landing accident minus landing gear, and is at Nelson Ezell’s in Breckenridge pending a fix…and it seems the plane skewed sideways while sliding on its belly and slightly twisted the fuselage, so it’ll be a little while before it’s up and around.
Mark
Corsair166bNo…damn it…I would’ve LOVED to find out the outcome of Corsairs vs the Luftwaffe, but no Corsairs ever fought any german fighters or bombers, only one was lost due to flak while attacking the Tirpitz in the Fjords (as opposed to Chevys) of Norway. This would make a good theoretical battle, one that I’ve played out in my head many times before, the Corsair vs the FW or the 109….if the Mustang was better than those two German fighters, and the Corsair was better than the P-51 below 25,000 ft (and it was, trust me), should’nt the Corsair be able to take the
German fighters? I maintain it could….your thoughts?? Let’s get into it….
Mark
Corsair166bI only met Robert once, my first jaunt to the UK for Legends in 2000, but was introduced to him by my friend Steve….we only talked for a few minutes….but I ask you, how long does it take to know when someone is passionate about something? Usually it shows through right away, their eyes light up, you know you’ve hit the right note with them…such was Rudhall. I never saw him again after that, despite coming back to the Uk the next summer, but I enjoyed the fact that I knew who he was and liked him as a person….in the states we had the equivalent of Robert, Jeff Ethell, who was just a marvelous man and went out of his way for people….folks like these just stand out in your mind and make an indelible impression….I’m sure they’re talking warbirds in heaven right now. Tailwinds, Robert…you will be missed by many.
Mark Morris
Corsair166bAs for the flight in the harvard, you get yourself out here to Colorado, gang, and I can guarantee you I Can get you up in a T-6 for an hour for $100 and the pilot will let you take the stick if you want…we also have a 2 seat P-51 and Sea Fury if you want to go that route, don’t know the prices. Think of it, winging your way over the majestic Colorado Rocky Mountains, snow capped peaks of 14,000 feet height….
Mark
Corsair166bAh, my old Corsair friend ‘Sun Setter’ , a name which they appear to have removed from when I last saw her…she looks good, but the flaps aren’t all the way down, just slightly…she would look good with the canopy cracked and a fake pilot in her seat with his arm on the rail…still, she looks terrific. I would’nt worry too much about the stress on the airframe, remember this is an aircraft made to haul 4,000 lbs of bombs, rockets, guns, and was used to having whole squadrons of men standing on her wings for group photos…I reckon she can handle it. If memory serves, this Corsair is a combat vet from the Marianas, right out of a squadron called ‘The Sunsetters’ (a way of referring to the imminent setting of the Rising Sun, aka Japan?). Can’t wait to get back to Washington and seeing the new museum and the Enola Gay, which looks reat from the pics I’ve seen of it…
Mark
Corsair166bOK, gang, MANY thanks for the help….the postal code, as far as I know, is WR8 0PZ, which showed up as being a Worcester area postal code, so this is all falling together….any more help you can give would be appreciated!
Mark
Corsair166bOK, gang, MANY thanks for the help….the postal code, as far as I know, is WR8 0PZ, which showed up as being a Worcester area postal code, so this is all falling together….any more help you can give would be appreciated!
Mark
Corsair166bA couple of displays/warbirds come to mind, first and foremost is Paul Bonhomme displaying in the Mk.14 (18?) Spitfire ‘JE-J’ over at legends, as I’ve said before, I believe he could take a Bearcat in that plane, it was so impressive….
Lefty Gardner putting ‘White Lightnin’ through her paces anywhere….has to be on a level with Stephen Grey or Hoof Proudfoot displaying ‘California Cutie’….the Lightning is just THAT impressive anywhere it goes…
Howard Pardue putting the Wildcat through its paces, or back when he flew the Corsair….today’s most impressive Corsair display would be Dale Snodgass flying Jim Read’s dash 5, really gets it going and down LOW…
Mark
Corsair166bMy first would have to be at Arapahoe county airport in 1977, memorable for a number of reasons….I got to meet Greg Boyington while he was sitting on the wing of a Wildcat signing copies of his book ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ at the height of his popularity (the TV series was on in those days)….it was my first real airshow, and while standing there watching the planes, I realized that I could see all the way inside this very attractive woman’s blouse when she had her hands on her hips, and I called a friend of mine over and pointed this fact out to him…his jaw almost hit the ground! VERY good airshow….Wish I’d had the camera back then!
As a photographer, I attended the last CAF show at Harlingen in 1989, some very good flying and a VERY long 36 hour bus trip back to Colorado afterwards….and I’ve been photographing them ever since!
Mark
Corsair166bI always liked building the Revell 1/32 scale F4U-1 Corsair (surprise), the one with the VF-17 birds on the box low over the beach….after that, i built scads of the Monogram 1/48 Corsair with retracting wheels, folding wings, all kinds of bells and whistles….I guess I liked Monogram kits the best because they had all the moving parts if you did them right…loved the Hurricane model they did, the TBM, the Spitfire, Helldiver, P-38, all 1/48 scale…not as great of quality as some of the Japanese kits, but fun to display in different ways….I’m looking at my Grumman Wildcat now, unfinished, but with wings in the folded position…another Monogram kit….
Mark
Corsair166bI have a bunch of the engine compartment and the gun bays, spare tanks, gear bays, etc of the Oshkosh award winner this year, Gary Kohs FG-1D….trouble is, I don’t have any of the cables for my scanner to get it up and running! I’ll work on that and let you know when it’s working….seems I could really use it for this forum!
Mark
Corsair166bWHOA, whoa whoa, folks! I posted a couple of polls a few weeks ago listing equal amounts of American and British (and other) planes and asked which contributed greatest to the war, and the answers came back ALL BRITISH-Spitfires, Tempests, Typhoons, Mosquitos, Lancs….The top fighter in a similar poll over here a few months ago (the Thunderbolt) got 1 vote! Let’s not go too nuts about this ‘non biased’ survey and it being All American, shall we? The Spitfire IS included as a backup to one of the choices, and I personally would put the Lanc up there with the best US bomber of the war, even if this survey does’nt!
If this survey asked for the top ten Rock bands of all time, I can guarantee you the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zep and the Who would all appear and NO ONE on either side of the Atlantic would have a problem with it….
This survey is being conducted PRIMARILY in America….what, you all expected the answers to include a bunch of British designs? Most Yanks think a ‘Comet’ is something you see at night, a ‘Mosquito’ something you swat……
Mark
Corsair166bI have some photos here in the house of a Hurricane you guys will be seeing soon enough (in fact, probably next year)….trouble is I’m not allowed to post them. The Lone Star Flight Museum’s bird is expected to emerge from lengthy restoration next spring…I posted some pics of her last summer on the avi8.com site and promptly got a call from Ray telling me to remove them and we got into an argument about his photo policies in the hangar and obtaining permission (I had permission from Ralph Royce of the LSFM and two of Ray’s own employees telling me it was OK to shoot), but Ray maintained I did not have permission from the ‘owner’ of the plane (Which, I assume, would be Robert Waltrip, owner of the LSFM) or Middleton himself…so I withdrew the photos and have not shown them to anyone since….curiously, I saw a photo of it in the shop shot by someone else not long after our little run-in, and alerted Ray to the fact (it was on the LSFM site) and it has also since dissappeared…..anyway, I look forward to its flight testing next summer, which if it goes anything like Captain Eddie’s Firefly testing, means we’ll see this thing zooming all over Northern Colorado for a few weeks….
Mark
Corsair166bWell, I’ll tell you, Daz’s post got my attention….seeing a Spit back in action, even if it is a replica, would be fun….sure beats some of the drab general aviation planes they are offering these days….since when did everything become an undistinguished, aerodynamic blob? It’s enough that cars have gone the same way, too….I would welcome a familiar shape in the sky, with some ‘personality’, replica or not…..
As for those data plate restorations (or ground up builds like the FW 190’s we should be seeing soon)….would anyone turn away from one of those and say it was’nt a warbird through and through? The ME 262’s here stateside that have started flying? The Oscars that are being built to fly by Herb Tischler? Did any one of you WALK AWAY at Duxford a few years ago when the Grumman F3F’s showed up there? I’m guessing not…I’m guessing that replica or not, you folks, like us over here in the States, were curious and wanted to see what these planes sounded, smelled, looked like despite the fact that they were replicas…..
Mark
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