A Caproni Ca.3 at the Italian Air Force Museum in Vigna di Valle. (Photo Bergfalke2 (CC BY-SA 3.0))
A Caproni Ca.3R replica built by Giancarlo Zanardo for the Jonathan Collection flew a few hops at the Francesco Barraca airfield near Venice, in Northern Italy. These short hops allowed Zanardo to get a felle for the engines and controls before moving on to actual flight testing.
Some adjustment are required to the propellers and central engine, but the aircraft should make its first actual flight shortly. Zanardo has already built several replicas of the Wright Flyer, Fokker Dr.I and Blériot XI, but this heavy bomber with a wingspan of nearly 75 ft is is a much bigger achivement.
Read more about this (with pictures) on Warbirds News
Spitfire Mk Ia N3200 flew again in Duxford on 26 March 2014, flown by John Romain. It was assigned to S/L Geoffrey Stephenson who was shot down over Dunkirk in May 1940, and spent the war in captivity. Stephenson ended in the infamous Colditz castle, where he was part of the team who designed and built a glider in an escape attempt. After the war, Stephenson was King George VI’s personal pilot and was killed in 1954 flying the F-100 Super Sabre.
N3200 was exhumed in 1986 and spent a few years on display in a French museum before being sold to the UK in 2000. Its restoration began in 2007 and was made by Historic Flying Ltd. It is the fourth Spitfire Mk. I to take to the air agai, and the only Mk I of the three based in Duxford to have actually been based there in wartime.
Excellent pictures of this superb aircraft by David Whitworth are available here.
The Federal Aviation Administration has donated its last operational Douglas DC-3, registered N34, to the Texas Air & Space Museum. The aircraft, built in 1945, flew in a low level flyby and then landed at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport where it taxied to the English Field Aviation hangar in Amarillo, Texas.
The Blue Angels, the US Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, will resume its public performances starting in the spring of 2014, a Navy spokesman has confirmed. A highly unpopular decision, the team was forced to stop its public demonstrations in April 2013 due to budget cuts.
The Bronco 99+32, in which De bruyn was seriously injured in 2012. (Photo Geoff Collins (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)).
The Bronco Demo Team‘s former Luftwaffe North American OV-10 Bronco coded 99+18 recently made its first photo flight. The aircraft flew for the first time in 2012 but the team’s other Bronco (99+32) was lost, with pilot Tony De Bruyn suffering serious injuries. Bronco 99+18 was recently repainted in its former Luftwaffe colours and Tony De Bruyn flew it for the photo shoot, having recovered from his accident.
They Bronco Demo team has another Bronco currently under restoration, the ex-Luftwaffe OV-10B 99+26.
The March 2014 issue of Airshow (Public Edition) is now available for download from the CAF French Wing’s website. Feel free to subscribe: it’s free! We hope you’ll enjoy it and that it will make you want to join our unit!
I digress today into general aviation news, for a simple reason. Maintaining a blog about warbirds and vintage aviation often means presenting accidents with the too-often loss of life or limb, not to mention loss of historically significant aircraft.
Today, the accident being presented ended unbelievably: last Saturday, a Cessna 170 struck a parachutist, sending him flying 75 feet back into the air and sending the airplane into the ground. Happily, and almost unbelievably, the pilot and parachutist reportedly suffered only minor injuries and are doing well. The whole scene was photographed by Tim Telford, whose amazing set of pictures can be seen on My Fox Tampa Bay.
I thought this was nice news to begin the week with. 🙂
In a surprise announcement yesterday, Kermit Weeks announced that the Fantasy of Flight museum will be closed to the public starting on April 6. Fantasy of Flight will not completely close but rather focus on restoration and maintenance, and some parts of the facilities will be made available to the public later this year.
In Kermit Weeks’ words: “Although we are located just 20 minutes west of Walt Disney World, we’re currently outside the center of mass tourism and not perceived of as a destination. We have a great product, but people have a misperception of what we offer. After 18 years of being in operation, it’s time we close the attraction and move forward toward creating the vision for what I know Fantasy of Flight can become.” Continue reading
Rostislav Belyakov joined the Mikoyan-Gurevich company in 1941 as a young aeronautical engineer, and succeeded MiG founder Artem Mikoyan in 1969. He was chief designer for the MiG-23, MiG-25 and MiG-29 projects.
Born in 1918, Miroslav Standera flew against the Nazis with the French air force in 1940, and was seriously injured during a dogfight. After France’s fall, he joined the Royal Air Force and flew with No 312 Squadron during the Battle of Britain before moving on to twin-engine fighter-bombers making night-time raids over France and Germany.
After the 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, Standera fled again to Britain to escape persecution of those who had served in Western forces during the war. He rejoined the RAF and retired in 1955. Following his military career, he worked as a silversmith in Britain, then in 1983 resettled in Bavaria in Germany. He returned to his homeland in 1994.
French aviation artist Romain Hugault is the author of the 2014 Flying Legends airshow poster. The poster shows two Spitfire XIV at (very) low level over a field with poppies, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War.
Recent Comments