Jim Appleby

[Seafury1]

Jim Appleby passed away this morning. I don't have any details. Just remember playing on his airplanes when I was a kid.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0032363/

[Baldeagle]

Very sorry to hear that, he was one of the most important guys in the World War 1 replica movement, not to mention his movie flying. They gave him one line of dialogue in The Great Waldo Pepper: "I knew she wasn't worth top billing!" We tried to get him to say it at a party once but he wouldn't do it, but told some great stories. One of a kind.




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[Jerry O'Neill]

I never met Mr. Appleby, but I sure wish I had.
My condolences to his family.
Jerry

[JimH]

My dad introduced me to the Flabob scene when I was 15...Jim was a huge influence on my early aviation experiences, along with Bill Turner...with whom I got my first biplane ride. What a great bunch of guys who wanted nothing more than to share aviation.

jim the appreciative

[aerovin]

As a student of all things Tallmantz, his passing closes another chapter in the history of that company and movie flying in general. He and Frank Pine ramrodded the nuts and bolts of filming Catch-22 in 1969 and he was intimately involved in dozens of other Tallmantz projects in the 1960s. I interviewed him in 1990 or so about his career and wish I had done it again in the more recent past. His aviation stories deserve to be well documented.

[Stoney]

So long Jim or as we called him at "Catch 22" Major Applesauce, haven't seen him in years, but as was said, he told some great stories about his time in the AF and flying the F-104.
We all go west sometime.

[JBoyle]

As others have said, anyone associated with Tallman and his work must of had a million stories.
RIP...

[Rauhbatz]

I have in storage (still not moved in yet!) the Frank Tallman book "Flying The Great Planes" ( I think that's the title).

Jim Appleby figures very prominently in the book with his restoration work on a lot of the Tallman aircraft as well as replica builds (Spirit Of St Louis). I recollect some blurb in there about how he built an Eindecker while stationed in Japan.

Sorry to see true legends of the air pass on...at least there is a next generation waiting in the wings (albeit smaller than in the 1960s).

[RareBear]

Rauhbatz,

The correct title is "Flying the Old Planes". I have a copy as well. A great book.

Walt

[marine air]

I have wished for years that Steve Hinton and Kermit Weeks would write a book about some of their experiences and the aircraft they've flown. I have seen that Frank Tallman book on people's coffee tables since I was a little kid.

[JBoyle]

I too have the Tallman book, it's a nice work.
My only complaint echoes a reviewer at the time, whoever edited it didn't know about aircraft...a long stacked Hisso becomes a "Long, stacked Hisso" stuff like that.
And Tallman gave a plug for his museum at the beginning of every chaper, making it come across as a series of magazine articles collected in a book.

I'm hoping someday our very own Scott Thompson will write a biography of Tallman and/or a history of Tallmantz.

I tried to do a similar book about helicopters from a ex-Army and retired Bell helicopter test pilot. He had flown everything from the HUP to the XV-15.
Sadly, he had no interest in the projeck.

[Rauhbatz]

Greetings Walt & JBoyle...thanks for the reminder about the title. This book has been in storage for over a year with all of my other aviation tomes; St Exupery Wind, Sands and Stars for example.

Although a great book and not something likely to be published today I found Tallman's prose a bit jittery when describing just about any aspect of an aircraft; text like "looser than a lady of the night on roller skates sliding across a Wisconsin ice fishing park that had a thin layer of machine oil'...all made up on my part not seeing the book for a while but these tidbits always seemed to occur about once a paragraph.

Other than this writing style one can't put the book down...and Ernie Gann wrote the intro!

Although a Frank Tallman production there are a few nice pics of Jim that appear in the book as well...

KK

[Baldeagle]

Just heard from Zona that there will be a memorial service on October 2 at Flabob. Jim was 86.




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