Warbird Information Exchange

Rich,

How far back do these photos go?

Steve G

I remember Clay Lacey making DC-8 passes in the 70's. But not part of the "Parade of Flight"

Steve G

Rich ,great shots, luv the DC-8.That must have sounded great!

There have been many great airliner beat-ups at OSH over the years. I believe my favorite was the Qantas 747 in 1981 (I think) which had been loaded up with smallish airplanes and chartered from down under by a bunch of guys. That was the lowest, fastest, biggest orange thing that I ever saw. I think I recall the DC-8 beatups as well. Fedex did a good job in a purple 727 one year as well. Northwest has made passes with a variety of hardware over the years, but mostly relatively conservative I think.

Rich's excellent pics appear to range from the mid to late 70s (XP-51, Boeing 100; the year of the P-51H was 1978) through 80s (Connie, Concorde). I have a bunch of that sort of stuff as well. Rich, are those slides? They look like they have held up very well over the years.

August

It was United Captain Jim Lacey who flew the DC-8 at Oshkosh a number of years. I'm not sure if the DC-8 was part of the Parade of Flight, but traditionally a modern aircraft such as the Concorde or B-1B would be the finale of it. My shots started in 1978. The DC-8 and P-12 I believe are both 1978 shots. I think the DC-8 stopped around 1982 when Captain Lacey retired, if memory serves me.

I'd like to hear from other Oshkosh vets, because I've never heard anyone speak of the Parade of Flight with anything but reverence. I was a teenager and I loved seeing a Curtis Pusher, Curtis Robin, Cabin Waco, GeeBee replica, Wilcat, and a rare Trimotor or seaplane all the way through modern jets.

It wasn't a case of it being "spectacular" (well, not as much as seeing 10 straight acro performances from similar types of aircraft like the show is now), but it was great to see so many interesting aircraft fly. Looking down the runway and seeing the S-43 taxiing out, or the Connie, or whatever the "buzz" plane was sure beat todays "wow, let's go over to Aeroshell square and look at a bunch of planes parked with hundreds of people around them", in my humble opinion.


PS- all the shots posted are from Kodachrome 64 slides. I started shooting prints around 1990 (not exclusively) and went digital in 2005. I still shoot some slides, but it's a pain to bring the N90s when I fly commercial to a show.

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Rich Kolasa
www.crystalgraphix.com

Actually, I was thinking Jim Lacey and not Mr. Lacy. I had the chance to speak with Mr. Lacey years ago in Denver. Pretty neat guy, got to do a lot of things for United (kinda like the similar sounding, but differently spelled and more famous fellow United Captain). I met him at the Wings Over the Rockies museum (can't remember what was going on that he was there as he lived in Illinois). His "claim to fame" in Aviation isn't as much being one of the guys who flew a lot of fly-bys for United, but his Pitts "Racey Lacey" and that he was one of the founding members of the IAC.

The only blurb I found on him from the internet was here -

http://airsports.fai.org/apr2000/apr200001.html

'Racey Lacey', an S1-S, now resides a few miles from me in Mountain City, TN, it was an extensive rebuild and now sports about 240 HP with a massive (for an S1) whirlwind prop.

Steve G

I always enjoyed the Parade of Flight and I miss it. I agree that it was watered down, but I like the idea.

For me, about two acro acts a day is plenty. If I see John Mohr and Patty Wagstaff, then many of the rest of them are much just more prop whine. As far as I could see the rest of the crowd seemed to feel the same way.

I could certainly do without hours of jet noise. It is one thing to see a Harrier or a Raptor, but not day after day and especially not the F-15s or F-18s that kept flying to show center and turning on afterburners just to turn around. I thought the warbird jets were more interesting and not as bad for for noise.

Some of the ground crew pointed how many of the crowd would leave as soon as the warbirds finished, even when the acro ones were still going.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK