Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i Flight Journal

OUR FEATURE STORY, “SPITFIRE SPY” by fighter pilot Clive Rowley MBE RAF (Ret.), reads like a spy thriller and is full of unauthorized, clandestine missions by Flt. Lt. Ted Powles during the Korean War over Communist China. Powles pushed his Spitfire Mk XIX to its absolute range and endurance, with bad guys trying to intercept him and while dealing with mechanical mishaps. He even set a remarkable altitude record for the Spitfire. The objective of these secret, long-range spy missions was photographic reconnaissance. And by the way, he had no guns—just cameras—and if there was a problem over enemy territory, the mission didn’t exist, so there was no one to rescue Powles from enemy territory! Photo recon had significantly evolved during the Second World War, but there were really no…

Flight Lieutenant Edward “Ted” Powles, an RAF Spitfire pilot based at Kai Tak, Hong Kong, flew secret and clandestine, high-altitude photographic reconnaissance missions over communist China in a Spitfire PR Mk XIX during the Korean War. His Spitfire is now represented by Spitfire PR.XIX PS915 operated by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF). Ted Powles In 1951-52, Flt. Lt. Ted Powles commanded a small detachment of photo-reconnaissance Spitfire PR Mk XIXs of 81 Squadron at RAF Kai Tak, Hong Kong. During this period, while the Korean War was being fought, he flew 107 secret and unauthorized photo-reconnaissance missions over Chinese territory. Because of the nature of the work, the entries for these flights were recorded only as “Photo Recce” in the duty column of his logbook,…

The British Aircraft (BA) Swallow originated in Germany in 1927 as the Klemm L.25, a tandem two-seat, low-wing, all-wood monoplane. Klemm first exported to Britain in March 1929 and started a small “flood.” Over the next four years, 27 examples followed with Salmson radial engines. The large 42-foot 8 1⁄2-inch wingspan dictated that the L.25 had folding wings for practical hangarage. Two German examples were fitted with the British Pobjoy R 75 horsepower radial engine, the catalyst for the formation of the British Klemm Aeroplane Co. Ltd. at Hanworth Airfield near London. British Klemm (BK) customers could choose either a Salmson or Pobjoy engine for the 28 British-built examples of the Klemm L.25, known as the BK L.25 Swallow. Its low wing loading gave great gliding characteristics, and it was…

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE as a retired U.S. Army attack helicopter aviator, we owe it to ground soldiers on the front lines to keep the A-10 Warthog Close Air Support airplane in service until a replacement of better capability can be fielded. Additionally, there should not be a proposed 50% reduction in the Tactical Air Control Party/Joint Terminal Attack Controller (TACP/JTAC) force structure in the Air Force, as cutting TACP personnel is bad policy. It appears that the Air Force is moving away from providing low-level, over-the-shoulder precision close air support, and that is not good. I say this from my 35 years of AH-64 Apache and AH-1 Cobra aviator experience, where I started learning in 1980 that the A-10 was an exceptional close-air-support aircraft, especially when used in conjunction with…

I GREW UP IN TOLEDO, OHIO with my mother, who provided the most influence in my life and my two sisters. My father, who was a World War I veteran, had died when I was only seven years old, right at the beginning of the Second World War. Life was tough; we lived between the railroad tracks and Swan Creek in Toledo. Eventually we upgraded and moved to a one-bedroom a stone’s throw away from the Willys Jeep plant. To make some extra income, we provided room and board to soldiers passing through who were going on to pilot training. The relationship between the soldiers and my family developed to the point where they really took to our family. Throughout the War, I would get boxes from the Navy guys…

The Spitfire PR.XIX was the last of the specialized unarmed photo reconnaissance variants of the Spitfire, the only PR version of the Spitfire with the Rolls-Royce 37-liter, V-12, 2,000hp Griffon engine (Griffon 66) and arguably the finest Spitfire of them all. Delivered to the RAF from May 1944, the Spitfire PR Mk XIX provided the RAF with a formidable photo-reconnaissance platform with a top speed of 460 mph and an official service ceiling of 42,500 feet. With wing fuel tanks fitted in place of guns, the PR Mk XIX internal fuel capacity was increased to 256 gallons, three times that of the original Spitfire. Carrying an external auxiliary “slipper” drop tank, the PR.XIX had a range of 1,400 miles. By the end of the war, this mark had virtually replaced…

As I sat silently in my B-25—shrewdly named “Fickle Finger of Fate”—awaiting the signal from the Navy deckhand to start my engines, I thought long and hard about how I ended up here and about the unknown that lay ahead. Sitting on the pitching deck of the USS Hornet, with 11 other B-25s ahead of me and four more behind, I watched as the lead B-25, piloted by Col. Jimmy Doolittle, began its short run across the sea-soaked deck planking. For a brief moment, I recalled seeing the same pilot 10 years earlier at the controls of a red and white Gee Bee racer as it zoomed around the pylons at the Cleveland Air Races. That was when I knew I wanted to be a pilot. Earning my wings As…

By the time Lieutenant General Richard Reynolds retired from the USAF in 2005, he’d had a distinguished 34-year career as a B-52 pilot, an Air Force test pilot with experience flying 72 different aircraft types, a B-2 system program office director, a commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, and more. If you walk into his home office you’ll find a letter opener made from a piece of molten aluminum. Etched on its handle is the word “Forgiveness.” The long-ago-cooled metal is a fragment of what was once the second B-1 bomber prototype. Known as “Ship-2,” it was one of the four original A-model B-1s from Rockwell International that preceded the 100 B-1B Lancers built between 1983 and 1988, just 45 of which remain in service.…

It has been almost 59 years since legendary pilot Bob Hoover first uttered the famous words, “Gentlemen, you have a race!” Hoover’s now iconic phrase was the cue commencing the first-ever air start for Unlimited class racers at the inaugural National Championship Air Races a few miles northeast of Reno, Nevada in 1964. In early March, the Reno Air Racing Association (RARA) announced that 2023 will be the final year that Reno-Stead Airport, the site of the event since 1966, will host the Air Races from September 13-17. After nearly six storied decades in Reno, far surpassing the longevity of the renowned pre-war/postwar Cleveland Air Races, the National Championship Air Races—the world’s only multi-class air racing event—appear to be a casualty of concerns including “rapid area development, public safety, and…

The first time Stratolaunch test pilot and director of flight operations Evan Thomas beheld the company’s massive six-engine, high-wing, twin-fuselage, payload-launch aircraft, he was “a bit daunted.” “I’ll be honest, the first time I looked at it I went, ‘Wow! I don’t know that I can fly that. That’s going to be a real challenge!’” That’s quite an observation from a test pilot who commanded the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Combined Test Force and has over 3,500 hours in the F-16 as an operational fighter pilot and VISTA program test pilot with Calspan. But the Roc—named for an enormous mythical bird of prey—evokes awe in all who see it. With a wingspan longer than a football field—385 feet—and a takeoff weight that can be up to 1.3 million pounds, Roc…