Low Pass

[FD2]

This one gets the commentator excited!

[Alisoncc]

What a total dickhead. How many aircraft would he have written off if had got it just a little bit wrong.

[FD2]

Agree - he's Ukrainian but has a Russian outlook I think!

[Capetonian]

This is the most majestic low pass I've ever seen. Watch from 15'00" onwards.

I believe that Air Zim a/c had pax on board on a revenue flight HRE-JNB and they weren't told about the flypast until after the event. Captain was shown the door, but what an event!

More here :

A few minutes into this one you see an Affretair DC8. Affretair was Rhodesia's sanctions busting airline whose owner, Jack Malloch, was killed in 1982 flying a Spitfire that he had restored.

[CharlieOneSix]

........A few minutes into this one you see an Affretair DC8. Affretair was Rhodesia's sanctions busting airline whose owner, Jack Malloch, was killed in 1982 flying a Spitfire that he had restored.

Here's a photo I took at Salisbury Airport in February 1980 of Jack Malloch's Spitfire on one of its first engine runs after restoration.
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Rhodesian Spitfire.jpg (28.94 KiB) Viewed 627 times

[Cacophonix]

Ian Smith was a Spitfire pilot in WW2, as we all know. Badly burned during the war for his pains too.

After a year's training at Gwelo under the Empire Air Training Scheme, Smith passed out with the rank of pilot officer in September 1942.[20] He hoped to be stationed in Britain, but was posted to the Middle East instead; there he joined No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron RAF, flying Hurricanes. In October 1943, in Egypt, Smith crashed his Hurricane after his throttle malfunctioned during a dawn takeoff. Suffering serious facial disfigurements, he also broke his jaw, leg and shoulder. Doctors and surgeons in Cairo rebuilt Smith's face through skin grafts and plastic surgery, and he was passed fit to fly again in March 1944.Turning down an offer to return to Rhodesia as an instructor, he rejoined No. 237 Squadron, which had switched to flying Spitfire Mk IXs, in Corsica in May 1944.

During a strafing raid over northern Italy on 22 June 1944, Smith was hit by enemy flak and forced to bail out behind German lines. He was briefly hidden by a peasant family named Zunino, then recruited into a group of pro-Allied Italian partisans with whom he took part in sabotage operations against the German garrison for about three months. When the Germans pulled out of the area in October 1944, Smith left to try to link up with the Allied forces who had just invaded southern France. Accompanied by three other servicemen, each from a different European country, and a local guide, Smith hiked across the Maritime Alps, finishing the journey walking barefoot on the ice and snow. He was recovered by American troops in November 1944. Smith again turned down the offer of a billet in Rhodesia, and returned to active service in April 1945 with No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron, by then based in western Germany. He flew combat missions there, "[having] a little bit of fun shooting up odd things", he recalled, until the war in Europe ended on 7 May 1945 with Germany's surrender. Smith remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, flying with the unit to Denmark and Norway, and was discharged at the end of 1945 with the rank of flight lieutenant. He retained reasonable proficiency in Italian for the rest of his life, albeit reportedly with an "atrocious" accent.

A brave, but bloody minded, man (like a lot of the Rhodies were).

Caco