Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2023 i Flight Journal

THERE IS NO DOUBT that aeronautical engineer Alexander Yakovlev’s Russian fighter has taken a back seat to more glamourous fighters like the P-51 Mustang and Spitfire. But high-scoring ace Marcel Albert, who flew and fought under three flags during World War II, was well aware of the combat lethality of the “Yak” fighter that somehow eluded its image over the years. This is most likely due to the fact it was Russian-built and designed to be rugged, manufactured quickly in large numbers, and only use available materials and labor, like the T-34 tank and PPSh-41 machine gun. It was a purely utilitarian tool of war. In our feature story “Tricolor Ace,” modern jet fighter pilot Clive Rowley, MBE RAF (Ret.) tells us the incredible story of Marcel Albert’s unlikely combat tour…

Ask Mark Meredith what maneuver he likes to fly most in his 1951 DeHavilland Super Chipmunk and his answer is immediate: “I love doing Cloverleafs!” The well-known aerobatic figure—a loop with a quarter-roll wherein a pilot pulls up and rolls 90 degrees from the airplane’s original heading as it passes through wings-level inverted—is typical of the flowing acrobatics the modified Chipmunk excels at. A sizeable group of nervous young RAF pilots made their first flights in N7DW between 1951 and 1955… But looking at Chippy now, its origins aren’t obvious. Nicknamed “Chippy” as a nod to its origins, N7DW was built as a T.10 Chipmunk, the British version of the Canadian-designed basic trainer. The stylized, leaping Chipmunk on its rudder is a tribute to the Meredith’s Navy service as a…

It was fate for these two aircraft to be adversaries during the early years of the jet age. They were the first mass-produced sweptwing jet fighters produced by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. During the Korean War, each aircraft went through several modifications (upgrades), and both fought it out over MiG Alley. In airspeed at 40,000 feet, they were evenly matched. The MiG-15bis was the most advanced version, and its speed at this altitude was approximately 600mph, about equal to the F-86F’s. In two areas the MiG-15 held a definite edge: it flew at much higher altitude, and it had a more rapid rate of climb (zoom). On most combat air patrols (CAP), the F-86s entered MiG Alley at about 40,000 feet, only to discover MiG formations high above…

British display pilot Will Greenwood owned and flew Yak-3UA G-OLEG for five years and had this to say about flying and displaying it: “The Yak-3 is a lovely aeroplane to display and it will very easily give you all the energy you need. It’s got lovely ailerons and it’s very light in roll. At speed the elevator is a little bit heavier, but the rudder is incredibly light, which is good because you’ve got no rudder trim whatsoever. You’ve got to bear in mind it’s a short-winged aeroplane with a big engine. If you pull to hard, you feel the wing nibble; it will bite hard if you’re too aggressive in pitch. It’s ultimately something that’s done on feel. It talks to you, but it’s something you have to learn.…

FOR CENTURIES, FEBRUARY 14, ST. VALENTINE’S DAY, has been associated with the exchange of love notes by adoring couples. Traditionally, this day was set aside for giving gifts from the heart, but on February 14, 1945, there was not much love for mankind as WW II and the devastation that followed staggered through another year. There was still a lot of “giving,” though, as Allied planes pounded Axis Germany in around-the-clock bombing raids. The “giving” had begun one day earlier as British Lancaster and Mosquito bombers began the fire-bombing of Dresden. American heavy bombers continued the daylight action as the fires of hell engulfed the ravaged German city. Elsewhere in Europe, the German Army reversed course and was in retreat, falling back across the Rhine River into the heart of…

At the end of the Korean War in 1953, there were 39 Sabre aces, and one more was added 50 years later after footage of some gun-camera film had been closely examined. All these pilots had the right stuff, and they also had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time. The fighter pilots turned out by the Air Force in the late 1940s and early 1950s were of the same caliber as those who fought over Europe and the Pacific in WW II. There was one difference: they flew fighters with swept wings and jet engines. It was a new world in which aggression at a high Mach number and lightning-fast reflexes were the order of the day. One of these Sabre aces was Lt.…

Marcel Albert flew and fought under three flags during World War II: First with the air force of his native France, then with the Royal Air Force in Britain, before becoming a high-scoring fighter ace flying Soviet “Yak” fighters against the Germans on the Eastern Front with the Normandie-Niémen Regiment. “On October 16, 1944, we fought seven Fw 190s southeast of Stallupönen, and at least six went down, although the Soviet infantry only reported seeing five. I saw one leaving and went after that one. The Fw 190 climbed, then dived and then climbed again, until I closed to about 15 meters behind him. He was turning when I fired, and then crack; down he went. The regiment shot down 29 planes that day.” This is how French fighter ace Marcel…

TO BOLSTER THE ACTION against Allied ships trying to bring supplies to the island of Malta in December 1941, several units including JG 53 were transferred to the African theater of operations. The first unit to arrive was III./JG 53, based in Catania, Sicily, on November 28. A few days later, they were transferred to El-Tmimi on the Libyan coast in North Africa, where they were immediately in action. By December 19, they had lost 15 aircraft, most of them destroyed on the ground by Allied bombs. What was then left of the Gruppe was transferred back to Catania for re-equipping. II./JG 53 arrived on December 2, 1941 with their Bf 109 F-4s in Comiso, Sicily, which at the time was still under control of Italian forces. The German troops…

Although I was born in Canada, my folks moved to Seattle when I was two years old. When I was 20 years old I decided that I wanted to get into flying. The ’20s were kind of a romantic time as I and the rest of the country followed the flights of Lindbergh crossing in the Atlantic in 1927. That intrigued me as did the exploits of Jimmy Doolittle flying the Gee Bee racer. I started flying in 1939 at Boeing Field in a Piper Cup and a Fairchild 22. As I started building up my flying time with the two airplanes my main objective was to go into commercial flying. My dreams however were derailed in 1939, when the War in Europe started heating up. As the Germans were…

Looking back at the Travel Air Manufacturing Company of the late 1920s from this end of history’s telescope, it looks like an aviation dream team. Of course, at the time, there was no way to know that each of the company’s founders, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman, would go on to become aviation icons. The time they formed the company, 1925, was a heady period to be in aviation. Advancements were made almost daily, the most important being a whole new series of more reliable, more powerful engines: radials from Wright and Pratt & Whitney helped fuel the new designs. Travel Air initially produced a series of big, three-place open biplanes but quickly started on a new concept: a high-wing, fully enclosed monoplane capable of carrying four passengers.…

EDITOR’S NOTE: There is no doubt that one of the greatest pioneers of aerobatics was Curtis Pitts. In our August 2000 issue, Flight Journal had the privilege of publishing the words of this iconic man. BACK IN THE LATE 1930S, I decided I wanted to get into aerobatics. I had been to a bunch of airshows, and it just seemed like something I wanted to do. So I went out and bought an F-2 WACO that had the reputation of being a good aerobatic airplane, but it turned out to be a real disappointment to me. It was big and heavy, and it just didn’t want to move around the way I thought an airplane should. Pilots of that time could make it look graceful to spectators, but inside the cockpit, that pilot…