Re: Forgotten pilots or flights...
Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 8:22 pm
Addendum to the last post - https://journalofwonder.embraer.com/glo ... n-his-mind
A Convivial Aviation Discussion Forum for Aviators, Aviatrices and for those who think Flying Machines are Magic.
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C F Blair Jr.Blair flew flying boats into Foynes, Ireland from 1942 to 1945. Foynes' sheltered inlet made for a good operation area for flying boats, and it was the last port of call on Ireland's eastern shore. As a result, Foynes became one of the biggest civilian airports in Europe during World War II. Blair was the first pilot to make the transatlantic flight from the U.S. to Foynes carrying passengers and mail. On July 8, 1989 his widow, Maureen O'Hara, cut the opening ceremony ribbon for the Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum. She also presided over the Grand Reopening and Expansion of the Flying Boats Museum in 2006. O'Hara had been asked to be the museum's patron. She accepted, and served in this capacity from its opening until her death in 2015.
O'Hara donated her late husband's flying boat (Sikorsky VS-44A) "The Queen of the Skies" to the New England Air Museum. The restoration of the plane took 8 years and time was donated by former pilots and mechanics in honour of Charles Blair.
A reproduction of Blair's red P-51 used to be displayed on the roof of the Queen's Building at Heathrow airport.
Blair's Sandringham Flying boat VP-LVE "Southern Cross" has been the center piece of the Southampton Hall of Aviation since 1984. The plane has been restored to appear as it did for Ansett Flying Boat Services, with registration number VH-BRC and the name "Beachcomber".
The Seaplane terminal located at The Charlotte Amalie Harbor Seaplane Base was dedicated in his honor.
Blair and Maureen O'Hara are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia
Robert Harry Doherty Rogers, SSA, SM, MMM, DSO, DFC & Bar (7 November 1921 – 3 June 2000) was a Chief of the South African Air Force. He joined the South African Air Force (SAAF) in 1940, and served in the Second World War and the Korean War. He subsequently rose through the ranks to become Chief of the SAAF. After his military career he entered politics and served as a Member of Parliament.
Read the whole story here... Bagley and the overload affair...Charles Sydney Kearey, a former Imperial Airways captain and later pilot for the South African airline Comair, was born in Durban in 1916. Moving to the UK he served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a pilot in 211 Squadron from 30th June 1937 to April 1938, when he travelled to Egypt and was posted to 14 Squadron at Amman in Trans-Jordan.
Resigning his short service commission with the RAF on 25th June 1939 he was seconded to the South African Air Force (SAAF) [1]. In August 1940 Kearey, then a Lieutenant in the SAAF, was based at the old Nairobi Civil Airport flying Vickers Valentia Type 264 transport aircraft. A Fairey Battle single-engine light bomber had made a forced landing near Lokitaung a few miles from Namoropus, an Italian fort on the border between Abyssinia and Kenya. Kearey flew mechanics to the site in an attempt to retrieve the aircraft and whilst they worked mentioned in casual conversation to his colleagues that it was a shame they didn’t have a bomb to drop on the fort on their return journey. Lt. Joe Lentzner, one of the South African Engineer Corps mechanics, enthusiastically replied that he would make Kearey one.
Lentzner packed an empty 44 gallon petrol drum with 380 sticks (130 lbs) of gelignite, around the explosive he packed scrap iron shrapnel consisting of ploughshares, a scale, a sewing machine, a differential from a motor car and some nuts and bolts, all obtained from a nearby abandoned general store. Fused to give a delay of 60 seconds the drum was bound with 100 yards of wire so that it wouldn’t break upon impact.
At 04.00hrs on the morning of 14th August 1940 Kearey flew towards the Italian fort with his crew: Fighter Pilot Lt. Oscar Coetzee; A./Sgt. F. Squares; A./Sgt. Ted Armour; and Lentzner acting as bomb aimer. As Kearey circled the target Lentzner lit the main fuse with a cigarette and manhandled the bomb into the doorway to a chorus of Roll Out The Barrel. The bomb briefly lodged in the doorway and Lentzner eventually managed to cajole it through the doorway where it fell in the courtyard of the fort killing 25 enemy troops. During the attack Coetzee received a wound in his foot from machine gun fire and the Valentia received 93 hits.
Back in Nairobi and sworn to secrecy due to the unplanned, unrehearsed and unauthorised attack the mechanics repaired the damage to the aircraft and Coetzee gave the cause of his wound as having stepped on glass from a bottle. A few days later a radio broadcast in Rome gave an account of an RAF bomber attack on the Italian fort, falsely claiming that the aircraft had been beaten off by anti-aircraft fire. The broadcast initiated an official enquiry and after a month of deliberation the fearless Kearey was publicly chastised, privately commended and quietly transferred to bombers. South African censors finally released the story with scant details to Time magazine for publication on December 4th, 1944. In January 1945 Kearey, now a Major, was awarded the Air Force Cross. When peace came, he led an equally adventurous life, operating Halifaxes between Rome and Palestine for the Jewish forces and later flew aircraft for ex-president Moïse Kapenda Tshombe in the Congo civil war.
andGeorges Guynemer (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ ɡinmɛːʁ], 24 December 1894 – 11 September 1917 missing) was the second highest-scoring French fighter ace with 54 victories during World War I, and a French national hero at the time of his death.
Georges Marie Ludovic Jules Guynemer was born in Compiègne to a wealthy and aristocratic family. His father was Paul Guynemer. His mother was Julie, Countess of Saint-Quentin. He experienced an often sickly childhood. Nevertheless, he succeeded as an aviator through his enormous drive and self-confidence.
He was originally rejected five times for military service due to frailty, but was accepted for training as a mechanic in late 1914. With determination, he gained acceptance to pilot training, joining Escadrille MS.3 on 8 June 1915. He remained in the same unit for his entire service. The first plane allocated to him was a Morane-Saulnier L monoplane previously flown by Charles Bonnard, and accordingly named Vieux Charles (Old Charles). Guynemer kept the name and continued to use it for most of his later aircraft.
andAlexander Augustus Norman Dudley "Jerry" Pentland, MC, DFC, AFC (5 August 1894 – 3 November 1983) was an Australian fighter ace in World War I. Born in Maitland, New South Wales, he commenced service as a Lighthorseman with the Australian Imperial Force in 1915, and saw action at Gallipoli. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps the following year, rising to captain. Credited with twenty-three aerial victories, Pentland became the fifth highest-scoring Australian ace of the war, after Robert Little, Stan Dallas, Harry Cobby and Roy King. He was awarded the Military Cross in January 1918 for "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty" on a mission attacking an aerodrome behind enemy lines, and the Distinguished Flying Cross that August for engaging four hostile aircraft single-handedly.
Pentland served in the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and later the Royal Air Force, before going into business in 1927. His ventures included commercial flying around the goldfields of New Guinea, aircraft design and manufacture, flight instruction, and charter work. In the early 1930s, he was employed as a pilot with Australian National Airways, and also spent time as a dairy farmer. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, he re-enlisted in the RAAF, attaining the rank of squadron leader and commanding rescue and communications units in the South West Pacific. Perhaps the oldest operational pilot in the wartime RAAF, Pentland was responsible for rescuing airmen, soldiers and civilians, and earned the Air Force Cross for his "outstanding courage, initiative and skill". He became a trader in New Guinea when the war ended in 1945, and later a coffee planter. Retiring in 1959, he died in 1983 at the age of eighty-nine.
Count Francesco Baracca (9 May 1888 – 19 June 1918) was Italy's top fighter ace of World War I. He was credited with 34 aerial victories. The emblem he wore side by side on his plane of a black horse prancing on its two rear hooves inspired Enzo Ferrari to use it on his racing car and later in his automotive company.
Page 14204 Supplement to the London Gazette 30 November 1918 reads as follows:Beauchamp-Proctor's victory total was 54; two (and one shared) captured enemy aircraft, 13 (and three shared) balloons destroyed, 15 (and one shared) aircraft destroyed, and 15 (and one shared) aircraft 'out of control'.[1] His 16 balloons downed made him the leading British Empire balloon buster.
Andrew Beaucham-Proctor
On 2 November, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, followed by the Victoria Cross on 30 November. He scored all of his 54 victories in the SE5, becoming the most successful pilot in the type.
CharlieOneSix wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:58 amNo, never met Jack Malloch. It's a long time ago but I think we were based in his hangar when we rebuilt the helicopters after their freighting flight from the UK -
UP's Raspberry Ripple in the foreground...
What a good post. Truly some of the most intrepid souls whose names, once on people's lips, are now slowly disappearing into the mists of time (save perhaps for Saint-Exupéry whose beautiful prose have rendered him timeless).PHXPhlyer wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:00 pmAeropostale: The hero pilots who connected the world by airmail
What do two major national airlines, an American fashion retail brand, a large publicly listed industrial corporation, a Hollywood movie and several prize-winning literary works all have in common?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_RippertHorst Rippert, an 88-year old former pilot of Germany’s Luftwaffe, has said in a forthcoming book that he may have killed French writer and war pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery in 1944.
Saint-Exupery, who achieved worldwide fame with his fairy-tale-like book “The Little Prince”, died in mysterious circumstances when his plane came down near Marseilles while on a reconnaissance mission. His body has never been found.
Extracts of the book “Saint-Exupery: The Final Secret” were published in Le Figaro magazine over the weekend, and Le Figaro quoted Rippert as saying: “It’s me, I shot down Saint-Exupery.”
However, Rippert also said in the article that he could not be certain of the identity of the French pilot whose plane he shot down. He also hoped it was not the French author as he was a big fan of Saint-Exupery’s works.
“I didn’t see the pilot and even so, it would have been impossible for me to know that it was Saint-Exupery. I have hoped ever since that it wasn’t him,” he said.
Saint-Exupery was a pioneering pilot of his era. Following the Nazi German occupation of France in 1940, he moved to New York but then came back and joined the Free French air force. He was 44 years old when he died.
Not Mermoz, but Guillaumet, of course, the stories blur into one, in the end, as one's mind wanders...TheGreenGoblin wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:39 am
The tale of Mermoz's walk back to life and safety still brings my skin out in goose bumps... a true legend...
https://www.patagonia-argentina.com/en/ ... patagonia/In June 1930 his companion Guillaumet was lost in the mountains during a storm. For days and days, Saint Exupéry flew over the Andes looking for him or for any sign of his fate. Nobody wanted to accompany him on a trip by land, since the wisdom of the Baqueanos says that the Andes, in winter, do not return men. He writes, then, in an imaginary letter to his friend, which will then be part of his book Land of Men:
“… And when I again slipped between the walls of the giant pillars of the Andes, it seemed to me that I was not looking for you anymore, but that I watched over your body in silence, inside a cathedral of snow …”
Incredibly, after five days of erring, the pilot was found safe and sound. The story of his heroic journey in the mountains, heard so many times by Saint Exupéry, is told in great detail and poetry, in, Land of Men (Wind Sand and Stars) .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_D._StephensonThe 44-year-old pilot had flown several thousand hours in fighter aircraft, both conventional and jet, during his 20-year RAF career. He had piloted virtually every type of British jet fighter including Meteors, Venoms, Hunters and Swifts, as well as USAF F-86s. He was considered one of the most experienced and capable fighter pilots in the RAF...
Air Commodore Stephenson headed a six-man team from the central fighter establishment, RAF, whose headquarters are at RAF West Raynham near Fakenham, Norfolk. They were at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, home of the Air Proving Ground Center, on an exchange tour.
On 8 November 1954, Air Commodore Stephenson was flying a USAF F-100A-10-NA Super Sabre, 53-1534,[5] near Auxiliary Field 2 of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He was flying at 13,000 ft (4,000 m) as he joined formation with another F-100, flown by Capt. Lonnie R. Moore, jet ace of the Korean campaign, when his fighter dropped into a steep spiral, impacting at ~14:14 in a pine forest on the Eglin Reservation, one mile NE of the runway of Pierce Field, Auxiliary Fld. 2.