The Yellow Peril

The father of a good friend of mine thought his son and I nuts to agree, as radio news guys, to accept freebie flights in a formation of Harvard aircraft. This was in the early 1980s, Brandon, MB, and Harvards -- which I saw fly overhead as I went to work Friday, because of the CNE air show -- were in Manitoba, also for an air show. That particular group of the planes were owned and piloted by a family.

The Brandon airport had been a training airport for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (I think) and I'm sure a bit out of nostalgia and a lot out of promoting the air show (surely in Winnipeg, but perhaps Neepawa, which was part of the training airports; again, I think) they brought the Harvards to Brandon and offered up a few rides to media types.

My friend's father thought us nuts since he was a mechanic on the planes during those training years of the war and as he described it, he'd watch young pilots "take 'em up, and then at the end of he day we'd see a spot on the prairie, which would grow bigger and bigger until you could see it was yer pilot walking back from a forced landing...."

The wings and wheels of the plane are very far forward. This results in the plane's nose being very high when the plane is taxiing, requiring a serpentine approach of quick winding turns to the runway so the pilot can see where he's going. The noise (roar!) is incredible -- "caused by the tips of the plane's 9 foot long propeller reaching supersonic speeds," according to the Cdn Harvard Aircraft Association).

The plan is highly acrobatic, apparently, but on my ride we did not do loops, although I'd begged for one (while on the ground, I'll point out!). Seeing other aircraft SO close in formation and being in one of the planes is damn cool though. And we did do what I called slices in which the plane would seemingly struggle for altitude at a 70 or 80 degree angle to the sky, then the pilot would drop one wingtip so the wing plane was perpendicular to the ground and then just let the plane "fall" sideways like that. One wears a helmet for such a ride -- good thing too since my head was banging from side to window side with each turn and maneuver.

Today, I saw the Snowbirds roar over downtown, again a sign the air show was on. I had a missed chance to fly in the Snowbirds, once. Missed because my boss at that particular radio station in Sarnia, gloatingly took the one seat we were offered for a media fly at the London Air Show. Pathetically, the asshole backed out at the last minute, too chicken. He was dressed and ready to go, got through the what to do if you throw up speech, but put a foot on the ladder to climb in and chickened out. Bastard. The only consolation I got was he had to tell people he didn't fly, since he'd been bragging about hogging the seat for himself for weeks...

I waved at the Harvards on Friday morning, like a goofy idiot I waved.