Posted on 10/23/2016 11:16:06 AM PDT by EveningStar
Frank Royal's Air Force took off at 1:38 p.m.
A vintage aircraft clawed through the air followed by two chase planes, one carrying the 101-year-old pilot.
The last plane in the formation brought a tear to Royal's eye. Its sleek lines still raise his pulse. He can hear the thrum of its twin engines without his hearing aids - World War II ingrained the 24-cylinder symphony permanently in his mind.
He has good reason to remember the details. That very plane, a fully restored P-38 Lightning named White-33, was Royal's first love.
And he flew over Colorado Springs to tell her goodbye.
(Excerpt) Read more at gazette.com ...
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Not very many P-38’s left let alone those still flying.
Good video and thanks.
This particular one was pulled from the jungles of New Guinea. It is in the pics. Amazing they brought it back to life.
Wasn’t there another story fairly recently about another pilot that just wanted to see it one more time?
From a couple of months back?
I am acquainted with Gen Chuck Yeager as he and I belong
to the same gun and archery club in Northern California.
It was my turn to open the clubhouse and bar one Sunday
morning. Chuck brought in homemade cookies per usual
and we talked airplanes. I asked him about the P-38 and
he basically said that the reason they required two
engines was because they were made by Allison and a
backup was necessary. I guess Yeager does not care for
Allison engines.
General Robert L. Scot actually flew an F-15 on his 85th birthday. He had to get the Secretary of the Air Force’s approval to do so.
Put a couple of Rolls-Royce Griffons on her and see what she’ll do!
I was 5 years old when the War started. The P-38 was my favorite plane. I remember I had a model of it that I played with all the time, under the dinner table.
Yamamoto had a problem with them too
Hmmmm ..?? That plane is not a P-38 .. it’s a P-51 Flying Tiger.
And .. I know it’s not a P-38, because my DAD moved to Burbank, CA in 1943, and he went to work building the P-38, along with his younger brother, my Uncle March.
The P-38 is a DUAL-WING aircraft.
That plane is not a P-38.
P-38 is a single engine, dual-wing aircraft.
I know, my dad built them.
We were at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport, and we wandered around for awhile until we came to the P-38. There was a little crowd around it, and we soon figured out it was a family reunion. The patriarch had been a P-38 pilot, and they had brought him there specifically for that plane. I walked up to him, shook his hand and told him that my mom had helped put those planes together. He looked at me and told me to tell her that she had done a great job, which I later did. She started telling me stories about working there. One that stood out was they had hired dwarves to mount the nose guns because average people couldn’t fit.
My good friend I used to aerobatics with Jeff Ethyll went in in a P-38 that he loved so much because his father flew one all through WWII....as he did a test flight before a show in Oregon leaving his wife, mother & father at the airport - where they watched the smoke from his crash.......
Still my fav plane, tho I’ve never flown in one......
.
“I’m 101 and three-quarters,” Royal said after returning to the ground at the Colorado Springs Airport to the applause of family and admirers. “As of last week, I went under hospice care. It’s kind of a special day.”
Don’t feel sorry for Frank Royal. He’s not afraid of death. He calls that journey his real “final flight.”
In a sane world, this would be the most liked and most retweeted article in the nation.
It is indeed the P38 (dual fuselage) Lightning
The famed ‘Flying Tigers’ flew Curtis P40 Warhawks
The P51 was nicknamed the ‘Mustang.
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