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In Flight USA Articles
Flying the Legendary Spitfire
By David Brown
Richard Paver’s superb shot of MJ627 shows the classic lines of the Spitfire/ (via Heritage Hangar)For many years, I had harbored the desire to fly a Spitfire. This dream started when I was allowed, as a schoolboy, to sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire at RAF Woodvale, and had persisted since my early flying days in England. Together with fellow Air Cadet, Alan Walker, I had spent my weekends at Woodvale supporting operations to fly other Air Cadets at 10 Air Experience Flight, which enabled us at the end of the day to wangle a quick 15-minute flight in the Chipmunks. After college in England, and more Chipmunk flying with the RAF and in civilian life, I started a career in the flight testing of jets, initially in England, and flew light aircraft at weekends.
I still had the Spitfire dream, but Spitfires (especially two-seaters) are rare. Time passed and we moved on, Alan advanced into airline flying, and eventually progressed to a Senior Captain position with Cathay Pacific flying the mighty Boeing 747. By then, I had moved to California where I worked in Flight Test and various Advanced Design groups, taught aeronautical engineering at a university and the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, and was lucky enough to be involved on the periphery of various warbird operations. We corresponded occasionally, and I saw on Facebook that he now flew a Robin, G-FEEF (aka Fifi), which he based in England. He was also an accomplished warbird pilot and flew Spitfires, Hurricane Sea Fury, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and even the notoriously tricky Messerschmitt 109… pretty impressive.
Contrails: Our Vanishing Past
By Steve Weaver
The magnificent Supermarine Spitfire, just before the eventful flight. (Courtesy Steve Wesaver)I watched as the Spitfire, a veteran of the Battle of Britain, gently touched the sod of the country it had fought for some 70 odd years ago. The roll out was straight, and the track was true and the beautiful craft had slowed to almost a taxi pace when suddenly the left wing went down. The big fighter slewed and started to go over. It poised with the tail high in the air, just at the tipping point, where an inch further would send it onto its back, then it settled back on the right main gear and the left wing tip, the tail still high above the ground. There was a collective moan from the watching crowd, mine probably one of the loudest.
Legendary Author, Frederick Forsyth, Revisits His Action-Packed and Aviation- Fueled Life in The Outsider
By Mark Rhodes
Frederick Forsyth is well known as one of the most accomplished and prolific thriller writers of the 20th century whose works have sold more than 70 million copies and been adapted into films a dozen times. This is only a part of his life’s work; his resume includes stints as a BBC correspondent (where he covered the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle––the core plot point of his most famous thriller (The Day of the Jackal); radio broadcaster; MI6 operative; and the youngest ever RAF pilot at 17 and a half. Suffice to say they don’t make ‘em like Mr. Forsyth anymore.
His recently published memoir, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue (GP Putnam’s Sons), chronicles Mr. Forsyth’s extraordinary, swashbuckling life. His tone is rakish, self- depreciating but also aware of how his luck, drive, and talents have served him well.
Mr. Forsyth reports that he was obsessed with the idea of aviation and being an aviator since flying in the seat of a Spitfire at the age of five, and indeed the incessant need to fly consumed much of Mr. Forsyth’s youth. His accounting of his early aviation training and roguish exploits in the cockpit propel the initial chapters of the narrative. His initial success was getting placement in an RAF Flying Scholarship in the mid-50s. The idea here was a novel one; give young men interested in flying the chance to earn a private pilot’s license with the idea that they might get the flying “bug” and join up later. Mr. Forsyth paints a vivid picture of the rough-and-tumble nature of this training, including an episode where he “buzzed” his old school.