• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Spitfire 944

gray eagle

gray eagle

SOH-CM-2025
In 2005, an 83 year-old World War II pilot is surprised to see 16mm footage of his 1944 Spitfire crash for the first time.






Myth No. 1
Americans did not fly Spitfires in WWII.

Myth No. 2
Spitfires lacked the range to reach Berlin.
 
Last edited:
Well that was a treat!

Most cool to see everything in that video.

Regarding myth 1, to be honest I had never before heard someone claim Americans did not fly Spitfires because that's just so wrong on so many levels! I mean a number of Americans in the Eagle Squadron flew them before America even entered the war! And they were used for photo recon as shown.

Regarding myth 2, well that was regarding the traditional warbirds. But, it's all about gas onboard. So, in those recon birds yes you just plop in two large fuel tanks, effectively doubling the fuel range, and yep indeed the Spit could do what they guy did so very well.

As I recall, an old member here, Tom Wood, had his grandfather fly the photo recon Spitfire during the war for Canada. I remember a story he told me years ago about when he saw his grandfather climb into the cockpit of a Spitfire decades after the war ended, and despite never having flown it since the war, performed a perfect takeoff, pattern, and as Tom worded it, "the softest touchdown landing he ever saw!" Tom also said that his grandfather taxied up, shut down, slild the canopy back and exlaimed, "Yep, she's a hot little bitch!" LOL!!!!

Gotta love it!

Ken
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top