Nearly 11,000 Stearmans were built, but only around 1,000 are still flying. Earlier this week, a handful of these biplanes descended on Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for a special mission.

Founded in 2011, a charity called Dream Flights provides veterans with the “adventure of a lifetime” flying in a Stearman biplane. The nonprofit organization conducts these flights all around the U.S. free of charge.

• READ MORE: Two Legendary Ace World War II Pilots Return to the Skies

The group’s visit to DFW was even more special, flying its 7,000th participant in 99-year-old WWII veteran Carlyle Hayes, who joined three other senior veterans.

“I’ve never ridden in an open cockpit aircraft, so this will be [the] first time,” U.S. Air Force veteran Jerry Brown told KTVT-TV.

The flights lasted around half an hour, arriving and departing from DFW, which is the world’s third-busiest airport. Both American Airlines and the Allied Pilots Association (APA) sponsored the event.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post World War II-Era Aircraft Visit World’s Third-Busiest Airport appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

• READ MORE: Why Aren’t Cessna 140s/150s Considered Light Sport Aircraft?

Answer: The biplanes you mention—Stearmans, Kaydets, and Navy SNJs—were mostly likey trainers.

They were yellow because if they went down on a training mission—as they often did—they were easier to spot from the air.

• READ MORE: How Can an Aircraft Get Struck by Lightning Without a Close Thunderstorm?

Often the trainees made unscheduled off-airport landings in hayfields, swamps, forests, and the desert. Having an aircraft painted to look like terrain would have made it more difficult to find them.

The post Why Are Some Military Airplanes Gold? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The weather briefing we had reviewed a half hour earlier promised a 20-knot headwind that would require two fuel stops on the 130-mile trip from our home airport in Kennett, Missouri (KTKX), to Little Rock Air Force Base (KLRF) in Arkansas. The windsock promised that getting the little yellow bird into the air would be a white-knuckle affair. We knew the flight would be anything but smooth.

The J-4 differs from its more recognizable cousin, the J-3, in that it features side-by-side seating instead of the tandem arrangement more commonly found in tailwheel aircraft from the prewar and postwar era. It went through several variations between 1938 and 1942 before the attack on Pearl Harbor brought to an end any future iteration. The J-4’s cockpit is wider than the more common J-3, and the second generation brought about the replacement of the open cowl with exposed exhaust ports with a fully enclosed cowl.

I watched the stick flutter to and fro in sync with the rudder pedals as Wilkins fought to maintain the centerline, all the while pushing in the throttle. The little plane leapt into the air almost immediately as the wind seemingly swirled from every direction along the 5,000-foot runway. Wilkins guided the craft along the invisible roller coaster, working to keep the wings level while maintaining a crab as the Cub climbed the first 500 feet. Once there, he put us in a slight right turn toward our first fuel stop 60 miles ahead, continuously fighting the stick as the gusting left crosswind did its best to push us off course. 

Twenty minutes into the flight, he called, “Your plane,” and I gripped the stick, doing my best to maintain 2,500 feet, where we had found just a slight respite. The sun had already reached its apex, creating invisible waves of air as the flat farmland of southeast Missouri gave way to the forested hills of northeast Arkansas. We were delivering the J-4 to Little Rock, where it would be on static display throughout the weekend at Thunder Over the Rock, an airshow that had been dormant since the COVID-19 pandemic three years prior.

In its early life during World War II, NC32775 had served as an industrial courier with the Civil Air Patrol at Reading Courier Station in Pennsylvania and was owned by Frances Nolde, who would go on to become station commander and one of the first female colonels in CAP. Nolde, the wife of wealthy hosiery manufacturer Hans Nolde, was fascinated with flying and set out to earn her certificate with her husband’s encouragement. She was completely seduced by aviation, and when the U.S. entered WWII, Nolde joined the CAP, ferrying cargo and personnel around the country. Efforts like this freed male pilots for combat missions, and her dedication led to her appointment as commander of Reading Station. After the war, she remained active with the group and was promoted to the rank of colonel, having logged some 4,500 hours of flying for CAP.

It was because of this CAP history that the plane we were now flying had been invited to participate in the airshow where it would share ramp space with more modern glass panel Cessna 172s and 182s operated by the Air Force’s civilian auxiliary. Wilkins, a captain in the Civil Air Patrol, had shared photos and history of NC32775 with Lieutenant Colonel Marchelle Jones, who immediately began making preparations for the J-4’s appearance at the upcoming event.

The discovery of the aircraft’s pedigree almost did not happen. The J-4, also known as a Cub Coupe, had been dropped off in Kennett for annual in 2008 by its then-owner and ended up becoming a permanent resident when Hurricane Ike stretched inland all the way to the Missouri Bootheel, lifting it from the ground and depositing it on top of the FBO’s maintenance hangar. Airport manager Sam Jewell agreed to purchase the damaged plane and set about fully restoring it. Both wing’s spars had been damaged, requiring them to be stripped down to the skeleton for repair. Fabric on the fuselage also had to be replaced. (In more recent years, the original 65 hp engine had been replaced by a Continental 85 hp engine with Stroker conversion that provides 100 hp, and an electrical system had been added to eliminate the need to hand-prop.) 

By the time it was ready for the paint shop, its previous CAP lineage had been discovered, and the CAP livery was affixed to the fabric body, but little else was known about its service in WWII. That is, until Colonel Frank Blazich, former CAP national historian, discovered it was the same aircraft flown by Nolde. In his book, An Honorable Place in American Airpower, Blazich chronicles the legacy of the Civil Air Patrol and how the use of civilian aircraft in the war effort was the first step in the organization becoming a vital component of the country’s air power. 

Arranging for the delivery of civilian aircraft to a military airbase takes considerable time, but that would not stop Jones, who cut through the layers of red tape with the efficiency of someone familiar with the inner mechanisms of bureaucracy. Further complicating matters was the fact that the plane would be delivered by civilian pilots. Wilkins’ service with CAP proved valuable in that he would not have to provide anything other than his credentials. His copilot (me) had to be properly cleared before the Air Force granted permission for a nonmilitary pilot to land at a military installation.

Nearly an hour and a half after takeoff, having traveled only 60 nm, I turned the controls back over to Wilkins as we plodded through the prelanding checklist for our first fuel stop in Newport, Arkansas (M19). The plane has no internal radio, so cockpit and external communications were running through a portable intercom plugged into a portable radio. The single push-to-talk button had been mounted onto my control stick so that I could handle communications while Wilkins focused on landing the tailwheel plane in the expected gusty crosswinds.

Hearing no other traffic in the area, Wilkins opted for a relatively straight-in approach to Runway 22, once again dancing on the rudder pedals and wrestling the ailerons as the gusty winds threatened to shove us off the pavement. Knowing that even a favorable forecast could change quickly, Wilkins had spent several weeks preparing for the worst, practicing takeoffs and landings at our home airport on days when most pilots in more modern aircraft chose to stay on the ground. The landing was uneventful, and we were soon taking on fuel for the second leg of the journey.

I announced our departure intentions, receiving well wishes from the airport attendant who had come out to admire the plane, and Wilkins once again pointed us down the runway and into the blue sky. Such would be our routine for the next three hours. Wilkins would handle takeoff and landing duties, and I would, thankfully, only handle cruise. 

The remainder of our flight would follow U.S. Highway 67, a four-lane divided route boasting a 75 mph speed limit. We joked as we watched the traffic below zoom past us, wondering whether we might actually be moving backward. With an average cruise speed of 70 mph while sipping 5 gph, the Cub was barely making 50 across the ground as it struggled against the headwind. Due to our limited speed and the fact that we had an assigned 15-minute window in which to land at the Air Force base, we made plans to make one final fuel stop at Searcy, Arkansas (KSRC), which was only 30 miles from the airbase.

Once again, Wilkins mastered the landing, ballooning once before settling down on Runway 19 and taxiing to the fuel pumps. We took a much-needed 20-minute rest and then briefed the final leg. Our plan was to fly to the eastern edge of the restricted airspace surrounding the airshow center and hold until contacted by the tower. Knowing a B-52 was scheduled to land behind us, we were abundantly aware of the need to precisely time our arrival.

As the sun began its descent, we began the final leg of what would end up being a four-hour trek. The afternoon turbulence had subsided a bit, making it easier to maintain a holding pattern over the town of Cabot, located 6 miles from the approach end of Runway 25. We notified the tower of our location, mainly for the benefit of the two F-35s practicing maneuvers nearby, conscious of the fact that we would never be able to avoid them—and that they would never see us—if they did come our way. Without a transponder, we were hiding in plain sight, all other aircraft oblivious to our presence, a sobering fact that became all too apparent when we noticed the KC-135 passing 3 miles in front of us as we circled counterclockwise around the town.

Just before our appointed entry time, a privately owned performance jet somehow missed the approach to the 12,000-foot-long runway and then declared a low-fuel emergency. We were asked to hold our position a few more minutes before finally being cleared to begin our approach after the jet made a successful landing on the second attempt. Not knowing the B-52 had arrived ahead of schedule, the four minutes that passed during the 5-mile final seemed like an hour, and when the mains touched down just inside the threshold, we both let out a sigh of relief. It was only after exiting the runway that we noticed the B-52 ahead of us awaiting its own taxi instructions.

Finally, after being marshaled to parking and completing the shutdown checklist, we exited the aircraft for the last time that day with big smiles and a high-five, euphorically congratulating each other on completing the exhausting mission.

Throughout the weekend, the little canary-yellow airplane with a wooden propeller proudly posed for photos with old and young admirers alike, her much younger and far more advanced siblings in the background. Little girls, especially, were enamored with the aircraft after hearing Jones tell stories and show photos of the woman pilot who flew it in WWII. 

The monstrous cargo planes and nimble fighter jets soaring overhead could no doubt travel faster, but only the little Cub could offer a journey back in time.  

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Plane & Pilot.

The post When Flying a ‘Little Yellow Bird’ Became a White-Knuckle Affair appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In 1947, however, WACO’s designers and engineers went a little crazy.

Like so many other manufacturers of the era, the company became motivated to introduce a new “personal aircraft,” targeting the scores of pilots returning from World War II. This customer base, with a unique blend of pilot qualifications and disposable income, tantalized the marketing departments of aircraft manufacturers across the country.

To stand out from the rest, WACO designed a four-place aircraft with a front-mounted single engine that drove a pusher propeller in the tail and named it the Aristocraft.

Predictably, the company touted a long list of performance advantages.

It claimed that the unique engine/propeller arrangement reduced drag, minimized propeller noise in the cabin, and eliminated the variation between power-on and power-off flight characteristics. It also promoted the ability to load and unload the airplane with the engine running without having to fight propwash, as well as the increased safety margin with the propeller positioned at the extreme aft end of the aircraft.

The airframe construction was traditional, with a metal wing, tail, and control surfaces, and a fabric-covered tubular steel fuselage. WACO subcontracted the still-novel tricycle landing gear to Firestone. It was partially retractable, sacrificing aerodynamic efficiency for utility—should the pilot land with the gear retracted, the airplane would still roll on the wheels, limiting damage to the airframe.

More notable was the powertrain. WACO utilized a 215 hp, 6-cylinder Franklin engine linked to the aft controllable-pitch, reversible propeller through a long driveshaft that extended through a shroud in the cabin. The driveshaft incorporated multiple constant-velocity universal joints with individual pressure-lubricated housings.

Because there was no propeller in the nose to provide cooling air over the engine on the ground, a blower attachment was used to do so.

Naturally, all of these design alterations added weight and complexity, resulting in an empty weight of 2,046 pounds—several hundred pounds heavier than the 1,600- to 1,800-pound range of similarly powered types like the 182, Debonair, and Comanche. Claimed performance wasn’t terrible, however, with a cruise speed of 135 mph at 5,000 feet, a 960 fpm rate of climb, and a 17,500-foot service ceiling. Maximum gross weight was listed as 3,130 pounds, which, when accounting for the 60 gallons of fuel capacity, returns a payload of 724 pounds.

WACO reportedly secured some 300 orders for the Aristocraft, but no production aircraft ever materialized.

Details are scarce, and some sources mention WACO’s inability to cope with a shrinking market. But, considering how unsuccessful other manufacturers were when faced with managing the vibration inherent in similar aircraft designs incorporating long driveshafts, it’s likely the company encountered the same problem, and it shelved the program entirely.

In the early 1960s, the Aristocraft was briefly resurrected, albeit in a different form.

Homebuilder Terry O’Neill converted it into a simpler version that utilized a traditional propeller arrangement for the front engine, intending to market it in two varieties—one certificated and another experimental. Despite flying the redesigned version, his plans progressed no further, and the Aristocraft story came to an end.

The post That Time When WACO Designers Went a Little Crazy appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The aircraft took off from Ada Regional Airport (KADH) in Oklahoma and flew over Lake Atoka during the 60-minute flight. According to GAMI, the warbird’s 2,000 hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine is the most powerful to fly on the G100UL fuel.

• READ MORE: GAMI Responds to Cirrus G100UL Service Advisory

“This big-bore radial engine operating at up to 48-inch MP demonstrates the excellent high-octane performance of the G100UL high octane unleaded avgas,” GAMI said in a statement. “The ability to successfully operate this engine as such on an unleaded fuel supports the continued operation of these and many other warbirds well into the future.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post GAMI’s G100UL Unleaded Fuel Successfully Powers Historic WWII Aircraft appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Retired Royal Air Force (RAF) group captain John Allman “Paddy” Hemingway was born in Ireland in 1919. In summer 1940, Hemingway turned 21 while flying Hawker Hurricanes with the RAF’s No. 85 Squadron, led by then squadron commander Peter Townsend.

Townsend was later to earn arguably greater fame for his romantic involvement with Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

Hemingway and the No. 85 Squadron were based at RAF Debden (later home of the U.S. Army Air Forces 4th Fighter Group) and then RAF Croyden during the storied Battle of Britain, in which the badly outnumbered RAF Fighter Command defeated the previously unbeaten German Luftwaffe. The setback caused Adolf Hitler to reverse course eastward and attack Russia, turning the tide of World War II.

• READ MORE: Top 100 Warbirds

Though Hemingway was already flying in combat well before the official start of the Battle of Britain and destroyed a Heinkel He 111 on May 10, 1940, and a Dornier Do 17 the next day, he never achieved ace status (five enemy aircraft destroyed). But because of “the luck of the Irish,” he said he survived being shot down twice during the battle and twice more during combat in North Africa and Italy.

He served as an air controller during the Normandy invasion and was temporarily made squadron leader. Following V-E Day, he was appointed commander of RAF No. 43 Squadron and became a wing commander. He was later appointed station commander at RAF Leconfield.

Hemingway served as a NATO staff officer in France, ultimately achieving the honorary rank of group captain upon retirement in 1969.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post Last Known Battle of Britain Pilot Turns 105 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Born in 1882, Geoffrey de Havilland was the second son of a village pastor. At an early age, he displayed a mechanical interest and pursued a career as an automotive engineer, building cars and motorcycles. Frustrated at work, in 1909 he received a gift of 1,000 pounds from his grandfather to build his first airplane, just a few years after the Wright brothers had made their first flight.

By World War I, de Havilland was working for Airco, where he designed a number of early warplanes, which enjoyed varying success, and flew as his own test pilot. In 1920, with the support of his former boss, de Havilland set up his own independent company and embarked on a series of aircraft named after moths, inspired by his love of lepidopterology, or the study of butterflies and moths.

• READ MORE: Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII

In 1932, he introduced the DH.82 Tiger Moth, a variant of earlier aircraft designed specifically as a military trainer for the Royal Air Force (RAF), as well as other air forces. Like many aircraft at the time, the Tiger Moth’s fuselage is constructed of fabric-covered steel tubing, while its wings are made of fabric-covered wooden frames. I’ve seen a single person lift a Tiger Moth by the tail to take it out of its hangar. The Tiger Moth was powered by a de Havilland Gypsy air-cooled, 4-cylinder in-line engine which produced 120-130 hp, depending on the version.

Like most trainers, the Tiger Moth had two seats, each with its own set of controls, with the student in front and the instructor or solo pilot in back. One of the major changes introduced to the Tiger Moth, at RAF insistence, was folding door panels that made it easier to enter and exit both cockpits. The feature was absolutely essential when a student or instructor needed to quickly bail out wearing  heavy parachutes.

The silver knobs on the left control throttle, fuel mixture, and aileron trim. The knob on the right enables “auto slots,” slats on the wings that automatically deploy like flaps to provide additional lift at low speeds and high angles of attack. Notice that there is no artificial horizon. However, there is a turn indicator (in the center) as well as a red column that indicates the aircraft’s pitch. It is currently showing nose-up because the plane is resting on its tailwheel.

The compass, situated just in front of the stick, is a bit tricky. You can either keep it pointed toward north and look to where the line is pointing, or you can rotate the compass ring to show the current heading at the top and follow that by keeping it centered.

• READ MORE: Reenacting Bombing Missions in an F-117 Nighthawk

In addition to the cockpit gauge, there’s also a mechanical airspeed indicator on the left wing. Red shows typical stall speed range (below 45 mph).

I’m at England’s Upavon Airfield, a few miles north of Stonehenge, which was home to the RAF’s Central Flying School, founded in 1912, and where the first Tiger Moths were delivered. It is now a small army base (hence the vehicles) and is also used as a glider field. With no electrical starter, the Tiger Moth is hand-propped to get it started. The turning of the propeller, by hand, engages the magnetos that send charges to the spark plugs, starting the engine.

This particular Tiger Moth, N-6635, is based on the one on display at the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, near Cambridge. It’s actually a composite that was put together with parts from different Tiger Moths.

The engine is modeled realistically. If you overstress it on full throttle for more than a few minutes, it will overheat and conk out. If you let it idle for too long, the spark plugs will foul up. With a small engine like this, the left-turning tendencies are not pronounced. However, the trickiest part of takeoff for most tailwheel airplanes is still when the tail comes up. The descent of the rotating propeller causes a gyroscopic precession to the left.

The Tiger Moth gained immediate popularity as the RAF’s primary trainer—the first airplane a would-be pilot learned to fly after ground school before moving on to more advanced fighters or bombers. It gained a reputation for being “easy to fly, but difficult to master.” In normal flight, it was forgiving of mistakes. On the other hand, the Tiger Moth required great precision from a pilot to learn aerobatic combat maneuvers, without going into a spin. However, it recovers easily from spins, which meant it highlighted a student’s shortcomings without (usually) putting them at fatal risk. Though I did notice that when flying upside down (or going through a roll), the engine sputters, probably because gravity messes with the fuel flow.

During the 1930s, between world wars, students selected by the RAF took about nine to 12 months to earn their pilot wings, building up about 150 hours of flight time, about 55 with an instructor and the rest solo. Their instruction included night, formation, and instrument flying, along with gunnery and aerobatics (for combat).

The Tiger Moth was sold to 25 air forces from different countries and proved popular to private buyers as well. It was a big commercial success for the company. A total of 1,424 Tiger Moths were produced prior to the outbreak of WWII, most of which were manufactured at the de Havilland factory in Hatfield, north of London.

Slowing down while descending to land can be difficult. I found I usually needed to cut the power to idle and glide in. Power-off landings were a very typical method in that era. It’s nearly impossible to see forward in the Tiger Moth, especially when landing. It’s best to lean your head out the side, while keeping one eye on controlling the airspeed at around 60 mph (about 15-20 mph above stalling).

• READ MORE: Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

There are also no wheel brakes. So once you do land, you just have to let friction slow you down. It’s easier in a grassy field like this.

The success of the Tiger Moth led to Geoffrey de Havilland being awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1934. But its story was only just beginning.

Welcome to Goderich Airport (CYGD) in Ontario, Canada, about 2.5 hours north of Detroit on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. In 1928, de Havilland set up a subsidiary in Canada to produce Tiger Moths to train Canadian airmen. This Tiger Moth, #8922 (registration C-GCWT), is based on a real plane that belongs to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, Ontario, and is in airworthy condition.

With the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the British government realized that Britain itself was an unsuitable location for training large numbers of new pilots. Not only is the weather often poor, the airspace over Britain was quickly becoming a battleground between the beleaguered RAF and the German Luftwaffe—the last place you’d want a student pilot to learn how to fly.

Canada, in contrast, offered vast areas far from enemy activity, where pilot training could be conducted. To take advantage of this, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) was created to instruct thousands of airmen from Britain and across the Empire in safer locations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, and South Africa. The yellow “training” livery was typical of the BCATP, though the real-life airplane was also equipped with a plexiglass-enclosed cockpit to permit winter training.

Many of the small airports dotted across Canada from east to west—as well as some large ones—got their start as part of BCATP, commonly referred to as “the Plan.” I selected Goderich to fly from because after it was built in Canada in 1942, this plane, #8922, was used to train pilots here at the No. 12 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS), as part of the BCATP. The same airplane later went to No. 4 EFTS at Windsor Mills, Quebec, an airfield that no longer exists.

Eventually, there were 36 elementary flight schools across Canada, in addition to dozens more devoted to training bombardiers, navigators, and gunners. At least 131,533 Allied pilots and aircrew were trained in Canada under BCATP—the largest of any country participating in the Plan—of which 72,835 were Canadian. The program cost Canada $1.6 billion but employed 104,000 Canadians in air bases across the land. De Havilland produced 1,548 Tiger Moths in Canada, by war’s end, to help stock these flight schools with aircraft.

While training pilots in Canada was safer than in Britain, lives were still lost. From 1942 to 1944, a total of 831 fatal accidents took place, an average of five per week.

• READ MORE: The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5

BCATP training was by no means limited to Canada. I’m here at Parafield Airport in Adelaide, Australia, which was home to that country’s No. 1 Elementary Flight Training School and received its first Tiger Moths in April 1940. This particular Tiger Moth, A17-58, was built by de Havilland in Australia in 1940 and apparently still continues to fly. Australia eventually had 12 elementary flight schools (plus a host of other schools) as part of BCATP, which was known there as the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS).

Prior to BCATP, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) only trained about 50 pilots per year. By 1945, more than 37,500 Australian aircrew had been trained in Australia, though many then went to Canada to complete their more advanced training before going into combat. Most Australians in the RAAF went on to fight in the Pacific Theater, though some joined the RAF to fight over Europe. De Havilland built a total of 1,070 Tiger Moths in Australia and even exported a few batches to the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Royal Indian Air Force.

The BCATP was one of the largest aviation training programs in history, providing about half of the airmen who flew for Britain and its dependencies in WWII. The ability to train in safety, away from the combat zone, gave Allied pilots a crucial advantage over the Germans, who typically went into combat with roughly half the training hours of their  counterparts. The program was so important that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who called the U.S. “the arsenal of democracy,” dubbed Canada “the aerodrome of democracy” as a result of its contribution to training Allied airmen—many of them in the Tiger Moth.

Tiger Moths were not only used to train pilots during WWII. Some were deployed for coastal patrols. I’m here at Farnborough, Britain’s former center for experimental aircraft development (southwest of London), to investigate another interesting purpose they served.

No, it’s not a mistake—there’s a reason why there are no pilots visible in either cockpit. This aircraft, LF858, was what was known as a “Queen Bee.” British anti-aircraft gun crews needed practice firing at real targets. But flying an airplane with people shooting at you is, well, rather dangerous. So de Havilland figured out a way to put radio equipment in the rear cockpit that could receive messages for an operator on the ground and work the aircraft’s controls accordingly. In other words, it was the world’s first “drone” aircraft.

Besides being able to fly by remote control, the main difference between a regular Tiger Moth and a Queen Bee is that instead of metal tubing for the fuselage frame, the latter used wood (like for its wings) to save money. The objective wasn’t to shoot down the Tiger Moth—that would be wasteful. Gunners used an offset to hopefully miss, so the airplane could land and be used again. But if they did hit, no pilots were at risk.

About 470 Tiger Moth “Queen Bees” were built during WWII. The term “drone” for a pilotless airplane derives directly from the Queen Bee program and refers to a male bee who flies just once to mate with a queen then dies.

By the end of WWII, nearly 8,700 Tiger Moths had been built, 4,200 of them for the RAF alone. It continued to be used by the RAF for training until it was replaced by the de Havilland Chipmunk in the 1950s.

The fact that so many people across the British Empire had learned to fly in a Tiger Moth made them immensely popular after the war, among private pilots and enthusiasts. An estimated 250 Tiger Moths are still flying, including this one based out of the small airstrip near Ranfurly on the southern island of New Zealand.

A number of Tiger Moth clubs exist around the world. The late Christopher Reeve, of Superman fame, once joined one of these clubs and learned how to fly the Tiger Moth. Reeve even made a movie about it, which you can find on YouTube. He said it took some time getting used to how slow they approach and land.

Tiger Moths have appeared in several films, often disguised as other biplanes. For instance, the plane in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was a Tiger Moth, decked out to look like a German Fokker. The silver biplane in The English Patient (1993) was a Tiger Moth (the other, yellow biplane in that movie was a Stearman). It’s worth mentioning that the biplane in Out of Africa (1985) was not a Tiger Moth, but the earlier and very similar Gypsy Moth, also built by de Havilland. Apparently there was even a movie in 1974 called The Sergeant and the Tiger Moth (1974) about a guy and his girlfriend who aren’t even pilots but build and fly one anyway. I have no idea if it’s any good, so please find and watch it for me.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing Ant’s Airplanes Tiger Moth add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Recreating the de Havilland Tiger Moth appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The aircraft is owned by the Coulson Group in Port Alberni, British Columbia, and spent decades fighting wildfires up and down the west coast of North America. An earlier deal to send the aircraft to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, fell through but the airplane was painted in navy blue in anticipation of that move.

“We are pleased to have the Philippine Mars join our museum where we will preserve this World War II-era aircraft for decades to come,” said Scott Marchand, CEO of Pima Air and Space Museum.

• READ MORE: Inside the ‘Spruce Goose’

A sister ship, Hawaii Mars, which fought fires up until 2015, will be sent to the B.C. Aviation Museum in Sidney, B.C., near Victoria.

“As a fitting tribute to their years of service and years of hard work by many people in B.C. and the U.S., we are pleased to see both Mars aircraft landing to rest at world class institutions in 2024,” said Coulson Group CEO Wayne Coulson.

What’s not clear is how the massive flying boat will get to Tucson. It has no landing gear and operates only from water. It needs a relatively big body of water to take off and land, and there is no such open water in the immediate area of the museum.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post WWII-Era ‘Philippine Mars’ Transport Seaplane Headed to Arizona Museum appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Both sides of my family can boast their fair share of those who nobly served our nation in the armed forces. My late father was extremely proud of that fact, even though he wasn’t a veteran himself. The closest he came was being a member of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University. My paternal grandfather, a Jamaican-born immigrant, served in the U.S. Army during World War I. After Pearl Harbor, my maternal grandfather ran away from an orphanage with his younger brother, lied about his age, and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, serving in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater as a staff sergeant.

My dad told me that one of my cousins from my grandmother’s Colorado-rooted side of the family served as a Naval aviator aboard the USS Hornet. I also had a great uncle on my mother’s side who served in the Navy during WWII. Another uncle—like myself and my father, a proud A&M graduate—flew as a navigator on a WWII bomber and recorded more than 100 missions in Korea and Vietnam.

Given my family’s military background—which, by the way, has made holidays like Memorial Day and Veterans Day resonate more keenly in recent years—it’s no surprise my dad proudly told me about William L. Tingle, who went by Bill.

Since my father was born in 1941, he never knew his first cousin Bill, a copilot on a B-17 Flying Fortress, one of the most famous heavy bombers in history and a major factor in winning WWII. His airplane was shot down over Nazi-occupied France in 1942. Of the crew of 10, only four survived—and Tingle was not among them. I don’t recall much more than that, other than seeing his parents’ graves next to that of my father, grandparents, and my dad’s brother. I never gave him much thought when visiting the family plots at our south-side cemetery in San Antonio. That’s probably because I never realized Bill Tingle’s body, like so many who served in WWII, was never recovered from his ill-fated final mission.

• READ MORE: Remembering the Mighty Men of the 381st Bomb Group

According to Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency documentation, on October 21, 1942, First Lieutenant Tingle was aboard a B-17, the Francis X—named after the pilot, Second Lieutenant Francis X. Schwarzenbek—that took off from the British Royal Air Force Base in Polebrook, England, as one of 99 aircraft on a mission to destroy German submarine bases in Lorient, France. Only 18 of those bombers made it to the target because the rest were forced to turn back because of heavy cloud cover over the target. Tingle and Sergeant George Whitham Jr. were actually filling in for two members of Schwarzenbek’s crew.

Witnesses on the same mission said the Francis X was hit by enemy fire from a Focke-Wulf 190 fighter, fell out of formation, and went down in the Bay of Douarnenez. Four crewmembers managed to bail out and survived but were captured. The remains of the other six, including Tingle, were never located or identified because the heavy presence of German forces in the area prevented any search efforts. Postwar attempts to find the airplane’s actual crash site along its route, or any remains of the missing crewmembers, also proved unsuccessful.

I know all of this detail thanks to Nanis Gilmore.

In 2019, Gilmore, a 72-year-old retired registered nurse living in Vancouver, Washington, emailed me to ask if I was related to William L. Tingle. She informed me that her mother, the former Charlotte Elizabeth Teepell, married Bill Tingle in Tampa, Florida, in February 1942, just before he shipped out to England. Bill was killed a mere eight months later at the age of 25, leaving Charlotte a 27-year-old widow.

After Charlotte suffered a stroke in 2007, the family decided to move her to a care facility. In preparation for that, Gilmore was going through her mother’s belongings when she came across a box of love letters Charlotte received from Bill during the war. All the envelopes were addressed to Mrs. William L. Tingle, and the letters—all 71 of them—were neatly stowed away along with some other keepsakes, telegrams, and photo albums. When she was a teenager, Gilmore recalls stumbling across an 8-by-10-inch framed photo of Bill in uniform in a desk drawer and asking her mother, “Mom, who is this handsome man?”

• READ MORE: Downed WWII Lancaster Bomber Raised from Sea Floor

“[She was] fumbling a little bit [to answer] because she really hadn’t mentioned him before…[and said,] ‘Well, he was my first husband. He died in the war,’” said Gilmore, whose father, Merrill Gilmore, married Charlotte about five years after Bill’s death. “…It was hard for Mom to talk about. I think it speaks volumes that she carried that box of letters her entire life.”

It’s undoubtedly a common occurrence for those who represent what’s been aptly dubbed the “Greatest Generation.” There must have been untold instances of marriages taking place just before the soldier was called off to war.

One of the Francis X’s survivors, Sergeant Ned Herzstam, wrote a letter to George Randolph Tingle—Bill Tingle’s father and my great-great-grandfather—that Gilmore has graciously shared with me. The correspondence included a rough drawing of the B-17 crew positions aboard the aircraft.

“As you see [from the diagram], Bill had a [more] difficult escape passage than myself, [the] radio operator,” Herzstam said in his letter dated July 23, 1945. “However, the bombardier [Lieutenant Harry R.] Erickson survived and he reported that Bill was putting on his parachute, but had not started for the escape hatch at the time…Erickson bailed out. That is the only visual report there was about Bill. However, I believe I talked with him last as I was one of the last to leave the ship, and he was still there when I left. Mr. Tingle, your son was a real soldier and one of the few real officers it was a pleasure to serve [with]. I heard him talk under fire, and there was no trace of fear in his voice, always calm assurance. The last words I heard him say were, ‘We’re turning back for England.’…

“I landed about 5 miles offshore and was fortunate enough to be picked up by a French fishing boat. Of the five men that went out of my escape door, three lived [and] two drowned. By my diagram, you can see five go out the front hatch…of those five front men, only one is back home now, [Lieutenant] Erickson…and he told me he did not know if the other four ever got out of the ship. So Mr. Tingle, it is impossible to determine if Bill went down with the ship, drowned after parachuting, or was taken POW. Only one thing more, wherever he is now, rest assured you can always be proud of him. I am!”

Gilmore said Charlotte, who was living in Boston at the time of her husband’s last mission, went to live with Bill’s parents in San Antonio not long after he was declared missing in action to share in their grief.

“[My husband, Philip, and I] visited the house [at 201 Cloverleaf Avenue in March 2018] and sat outside with the current owner and chatted for quite some time,” she told me in one of the many emails we have exchanged about Bill and Charlotte’s brief life together. “He remembered the Tingles.”

Tingle’s name is enshrined on the Wall of the Missing, along with more than 5,000 MIA men and women—most of whom died in the Battle of the Atlantic or the strategic air bombardment of northwest Europe—at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial in England. My father had a marker erected for Bill at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. Gilmore also shared with me the letter my father sent to her mother in 2003 to deliver that special news.

Inspired by her mother Charlotte, who died at age 94 in 2009, and Bill’s incredible love story, Gilmore visited the Cambridge memorial with her husband in 2019.

“The wall stretches a block in length,” Gilmore said. “It was, for me, overwhelming to see the names plus all the crosses in the field and to realize the enormous sacrifice made to win the war. It was an emotional experience when the superintendent of the memorial took us to where Bill’s name was on the wall and handed me an American and British flag [to take photos with].”

At Gilmore’s urging, my cousin Dr. Leslie E. Tingle, also an A&M alum and the eldest son of the decorated Air Force officer and late uncle, and I have submitted DNA samples to the Department of Defense Family Reference Database for use in the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It’s a service the government provides so that in case any remains are ever discovered during excavations of Europe’s beaches and battlefields, Bill Tingle might be able to be identified. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, more than 72,000 service members remain unaccounted for from the WWII era.

“The journey to find Bill has been fascinating and very emotional at the same time,” Gilmore said. “I know my mom and Bill are together now, and I’d like to think that this search is somehow meaningful for them too.”

Before enlisting in 1941 and earning his wings at Brooks Field in San Antonio, Bill Tingle was “studying voice in Boston,” according to a three-paragraph article in the October 29, 1942, San Antonio Evening News with the headline: “1st Lt. W.L. Tingle Reported Missing in Action.” It was in Boston where Bill and Charlotte first met in 1941 as voice students, started dating, and fell in love.

It didn’t take me long to realize the little fact about “studying voice” near the end of the newspaper story helps to explain the closing of Herzstam’s letter to Bill’s father. It was clearly a nod to my distant cousin’s love for music and singing. In one of his final letters to Charlotte, Gilmore said he told his wife that he even led his bomber group—in need of a morale boost—in song because a scheduled vaudeville troupe was late for its performance.

“Well, I’ll end now with a thought [from a Christian Science hymnal] that proved helpful to me: ‘O’er waiting harpstrings of the mind, there sweeps a strain, low, sad, and sweet, whose measures bind the power of pain and wake a white-winged angel throng of thoughts illumined by faith and breathed in raptured song with love perfumed.’ A lot of Bill’s life was devoted to song and I’m sure he’d want you all to carry on this singing. — Respectfully, Ned.”

Respectfully, indeed. Rest in peace, Bill and Charlotte.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Plane & Pilot.

The post A War-Torn Tale of Love, Service appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Anthony Fokker was Dutch, born in the colonial East Indies. In 1910, at age 20, he moved to Germany to pursue his interest in aviation. He soon founded his own airplane company there, and during World War I it designed a number of successful and famous fighter planes for the Germans. Fokker himself was an accomplished pilot. I wrote a previous article on the Fokker Dr.I triplane, which you can check out here.

• READ MORE: Recreating the Final Flight of the Red Baron

After losing WWI, Germany had to surrender all its warplanes and aircraft factories, including Fokker’s factory, under the Treaty of Versailles. Fokker, however, was able to bribe railway and border officials to smuggle some of his equipment back to his native Netherlands. That equipment allowed him to reestablish his company in Holland and design the Fokker F.VII, a single-engine transport for the fledgling postwar civilian market. I’m in one of those models here, in KLM colors, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (EHAM).

The F.VII’s fuselage was fabric stretched over a steel-tube frame. Its wings were plywood-skinned. The original, single-engine version of the F.VII was powered by a variety of different models of radial engines, which ranged from 360 to 480 hp. Inside there was room for eight passengers, as well as a bathroom (the door to my right here).

The cabin was connected to the two-man cockpit by a little door under the fuel tank and starter switches. On the instrument panel, from left to right: oil pressure and temperature, altitude, another oil temperature gauge, air speed indicator (with a turn indicator below it), clock, and rpm tachometer. Around the cockpit you can see all the wires and pulleys connecting the controls to the flight surfaces outside. Turn or push the yoke and they quite clearly move. Fly by wire, indeed. The compass is basically a bowl with a magnet floating in it.

The designer of the initial F.VII was Walter Rethel, who was later hired by Willy Messerschmitt and went on to design the famous Bf 109, the main German fighter at the start of World War II.

With a single engine, even a fairly powerful one for its time, the Fokker F.VII didn’t exactly spring off the ground. It lumbers into the air and climbs gradually. Nevertheless, in the early 1920s, the F.VII became a successful early passenger transport for early airlines such as Dutch KLM and Belgian Sabena. Here I am flying over the historic center of Amsterdam.

In 1924, the F.VII even introduced flights from Amsterdam to the East Indies. Needless to say, it wasn’t nonstop and could take many days.

In 1925, automakers Henry Ford and his son Edsel began the Ford Reliability Tour, a challenge for aircraft to successfully complete a 1,900-mile course across the American Midwest with stops in 10 cities. To compete in Ford’s challenge, and make the airplane more reliable in general, Fokker had the F.VII redesigned to have three engines, adding two mounted on the side struts. The new F.VIIb/3m, decked out here in Sabena colors and flying over Brussels, became immediately popular, with 154 built. Each of the three engines was a 200 hp Wright J-4 Whirlwind.

• READ MORE: Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

Belgian tycoon Alfred Loewenstein, calculated to be the third-richest man in the world at his peak in the 1920s, even owned his own private Fokker F.VII. Flying over the English Channel in 1928, he had one of the most unfortunate bathroom breaks in history. You see, the door to the bathroom (left) is directly across from the door to the outside (right). It seems Loewenstein opened and walked through the wrong one and fell to his death in the water below. Though to this day, some still suspect it was murder. There’s even a book about this incident, The Man Who Fell from the Sky by William Norris.

If that were the sum of the F.VII’s history, it might be pretty uninspiring. But to tell the rest of it, I’m here at Spitsbergen in Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard for Byrd’s flight to the North Pole. Richard Byrd was a U.S. naval officer who commanded air patrols out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, during WWI. He played an active but supporting role in the first attempts to cross the Atlantic by air, and in 1926 had his big shot at fame. His Fokker F.VIIa/3m, mounted on snow skis, was named the Josephine Ford, after the daughter of Edsel Ford, who helped finance the expedition.

This was a two-man expedition, with Byrd accompanied by Navy Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett. The passenger seats were torn out and replaced with extra fuel tanks and emergency supplies.

The inside of the cockpit is quite similar to the one-engine version but with three separate throttles and tachometers (showing rpm). There was no airport in Svalbard at the time, so they had to take off from a snow-covered field—hence the skis. Byrd’s flight, from Svalbard and back, took 15 hours and 57 minutes, including 13 minutes spent circling at their farthest north point, which Byrd claimed, based on his sextant readings, to be the North Pole.

Did he really reach the North Pole and become the first to fly over it? This remains hotly disputed to this day, with some researchers claiming that he faked his sextant readings and fell short of his goal. In that case, the true prize would belong to Norwegian Roald Amundsen, already the first to reach the South Pole by land, in his airship Norge.

• READ MORE: The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5

A few observations about flying the Fokker F.VII, at least in the sim. First, it’s not very stable, in the sense of wanting to correct back to straight and level flight. It’s sensitive to being loaded either nose-heavy or tail-heavy and requires a lot of control input. Second, that big wing really likes to glide. To descend without overspeeding, I basically have to put all three throttles back to idle and glide down.

Last, there are no differential brakes and no tailwheel. That makes the F.VII extremely hard to control on the ground, even just to taxi. That’s especially true on snow skis.

Whether Byrd truly did reach the North Pole or not, he became a huge national hero when he returned to the U.S. Byrd and Bennett were both presented with the Medal of Honor by then-President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

The following year in 1927, Byrd outfitted a new Fokker F.VII/3m, named America, to bid for the Orteig Prize, promising $25,000 for the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris (or vice versa). Anthony Fokker himself had recently moved to the United States and was part of the team preparing Byrd and his crew—the odds-on favorite—for the Atlantic crossing. During practices, however, America—piloted by Fokker himself—crashed, injuring both Byrd and Bennett and postponing their attempt. As a result, while America was being repaired, Charles Lindbergh—an unheard-of underdog—made the flight solo in the Spirit of St. Louis, becoming an aviation legend.

• READ MORE: Simulating a Bombing Raid in an F-16

The Fokker F.VII would still achieve fame, though, crossing a different ocean at the hands of Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith in 1928. If you’ve ever passed through Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (YSSY) and wondered who it’s named after, you’re about to find out. (If you’re an Australian, you already know).

Movie star handsome Smith, known as “Smithy,” fought as a combat engineer at Gallipoli in WWI but soon joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He was shot down, injured, and returned to become a flying instructor in Australia. From that day, Smith had a dream to cross the Pacific Ocean by air from the U.S. to Australia. By 1928 he was ready to try to achieve that goal. That’s why I’m here at Oakland Municipal Airport (KOAK) in California, where he took off in his Fokker F.VIIb/3m Southern Cross. Not unlike Byrd’s airplane, the inside has been altered to make space for extra fuel tanks.

At 8:54 a.m. on May 31, 1928, Smith and his four-man crew lifted off from Oakland on the first leg of their journey to Hawaii. At the time, flying to Hawaii, much less Australia, was an extremely daunting prospect. While they had a radio with limited range, there were no radio beacons to guide them. They could only estimate a course based on the latest, often inaccurate, weather reports over the Pacific and hope that unexpected winds wouldn’t blow them off course and make them miss Hawaii entirely. As they flew over the Golden Gate— the bridge hadn’t been built yet—they knew that several aviators before them had estimated wrong and simply vanished into the vastness of the Pacific.

The first stage from Oakland to Hawaii covered 2,400 miles and took 27 hours and 25 minutes (87.54 mph). It was uneventful. But one can only imagine their joy as they arrived here over the northeast shore of Oahu.

They landed at Wheeler Army Airfield in the center of Oahu. The Southern Cross was the first foreign-registered airplane to arrive in Hawaii and was greeted at Wheeler by thousands, including Governor Wallace Rider Farrington. Smith and his crew were put up at Honolulu’s pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel to rest for the next stage.

• READ MORE: A Virtual History of the Piper Cub

The runway at Wheeler was too short for the Southern Cross to take off fully loaded, so they flew to Barking Sands on the west coast of Kauai, where a special runway had been constructed. They took off from Barking Sands at 5:20 a.m. on June 3, bound for Suva in Fiji.

The journey from Hawaii to Fiji was 3,155 miles—the longest flight yet over continuous seas. It lasted 34 hours and 30 minutes at an average speed of 91.45 mph.

Halfway across near the equator, the Southern Cross encountered a tropical thunderstorm. Keep in mind, the crew did not have the benefit of an artificial horizon. The only way it could keep level, flying blind, was keeping a close eye on airspeed, altitude, and the inclinometer (or turn indicator). Somehow, the crew weathered the storm and kept going.

The crew undoubtedly felt great relief when it spotted the green landscape of Fiji ahead. There was no airport at that time, so the Southern Cross landed on a cricket field. Once again, it was far too small to use to take off again, so after a few days’ rest, the crew relocated to a beach from which to depart for the next and final leg of the journey. Leaving Fiji on June 9, the aviators embarked on their final 1,683-mile stretch home to Australia.

Once more they encountered storms, which blew them nearly 150 miles off course. Even when the weather was clear, the unrelenting and trackless ocean must have been overwhelming.

The Southern Cross reached the Australian coastline near Ballina, well south of its intended target, and turned north toward Brisbane. As the crew reached Brisbane, it was greeted by an aerial escort. The goal was Eagle Farm Airport northeast of the city—now the location of Brisbane’s main international airport.

The Southern Cross had flown 7,187 miles (11,566 kilometers) in 83 hours and 72 minutes. The Pacific Ocean had been conquered by the air for the very first time. A crowd of 26,000 greeted Smith and his crew when they touched down at Eagle Farm.

Smith died in 1935 at 35 when his airplane disappeared over the Indian Ocean while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record. His career was filled with both triumph and scandal, but he is still considered Australia’s great aviation hero. If you visit Brisbane’s airport, you can still see the real Southern Cross on display in a dedicated hangar.

The Fokker F.VII continued as a popular airliner into the 1930s. However, the vulnerability of its fabric-and-wood construction became apparent following a 1931 TWA crash that resulted in the death of famed University of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. As a result, the Fokker F.VII gave way to all-metal airliners such as the Boeing 247, Lockheed L-10 Electra, and eventually the DC-3.

One of the most popular early successors to the Fokker F.VII was the Ford Trimotor, basically an all-metal version of the F.VII. For all their sponsorship, the Fords seem to have gotten something out of it in the end. Anthony Fokker, nicknamed “The Flying Dutchman,” lived most of the rest of his life in the U.S. and died at  49 in New York in 1939 from pneumococcal meningitis.  

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing the “Local Legend” Fokker F.VII add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII appeared first on FLYING Magazine.