John Bradshaw’s Iraqi Fury

According to the feature on this aircraft in my Warbirds Worldwide journal this Fury was one of the 28 examples recovered by Jurist and Tallichet from Iraq
in 1979.
It was being rebuilt at the Coleman Museum in Texas and had just commenced ground running when John first inspected the aircraft.
The airframe had been in external storage with the Iraqi’s,and had recorded 690 hours, but the engine had been in internal storage and was a fully inhibited example that had apparently recorded 195 hours previously.
The Coleman Museum removed the cylinder heads to find the internals in excellent condition.
It does not say if this is the current engine fitted but I am sure that it is being looked after very closely,although with recent Centaurus problems I think I would be keeping a very close eye on it.It may well perform perfectly for years,after all I don’t remember TF956 having to many problems although spares were probably more accessible and of course the engines were that much younger back then.
Still on Centaurus engines ,I was recently told that the late Paul Morgan was using technology on his aircraft from his formula1 buisness and the aircraft was performing significantly better as a result although this is only what i heard.
Hope this is of interest on this thread,

Steve

Re Legends 95

Hi Snapper ,
Didn’t know if you were asking me or Steve Connor,
unforunately i don’t have a copy at all.
I do know that Steve Connor had some for sale at one time not too long ago,
as another forum member bought a copy.I dont know if he has any more ,I’d like a copy if he has though .

Steve

Re Date OFMC founded

According to their website ,the OFMC was founded in 1981.
Hope this helps,I think they already owned the P.51D although I don’t think it was airworthy at this time.The first time I saw the P.51 was at the fighter meet in 84 I think,I seem to recall Mark and John Watts flying MH434 and ML417 in two ship sequences,

Steve

Especially for Tbirdman

Here are a couple of pics from that brunch patrol plus the Hunter at Seething air show 1981.
I’ve posted the Fury pic on the Sea Fury thread.

Steve

Jungmeister

Thats amazing,such a small world !!
I have some pics from that event,i’ll try and post some when i get time,

Steve

Good show snapper,

Your efforts in giving George a great day out were second to none.
Despite my controversial outlook,I have read through this thread and looked at the pics and thought , hang on a minute, some of those guys should be out on the line ,and for as long as they can be.
Obviously i’m talking about the older guys like George who are remembering and sharing their experiences of when being on the line wasn’t always so pleasant.
I’m glad he had a great time,and well done you for making it happen.

Steve 964

I think there should be a lot more care and responsibility taken on this problem.Primarily we are talking about the pilots life being at risk ,secondly the effects if the aircraft came down in the event of an in flight failure , and thirdly the demise of the aircraft itself.I know that the only way to keep an aircraft reasonably safe is to keep it in a museum ,but that is not the choice of the RNHF or many other owners (not what i would choose either for that matter)so the answer is to make the engine reliable,the Centaurus should be a reliable engine,but if they can’t even assemble it correctly there is no chance of it being reliable.
Trouble is many establishments can now only use companies who are on ‘their’ approved lists of suppliers,or companies that are for instance –
ISO 9002 or A8-20 registered etc, (awash with QA/QC and all the other bulls**t that goes with it) this is not always the best way to go in my experience,especially if the job in question is specialized or in this case almost unique.

Steve