Fantasy of Flight Video

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the need for a tripod, so my camera handling would be smooth. Naturally, once I got one, I forgot to take it with me when I visited Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. However, I do offer this clip as my best effort to be a human steady-cam, and it does capture the majesty of this veritable war bird, the P-40N Warhawk.

P-40's were probably the front line fighter of the late 1930's, and were flown by multiple allied air forces during the war. They served in China (most famously with the American Volunteer Group or AVG), Africa, the South Pacific, Russia and to a lesser extent Europe. This P-40 was manufactured by the Curtis company, and was a two passenger model, but was as equally armed as the one seat version. This one, of some 15,000 manufactured, was probably used stateside as a trainer, for those pilots completing advanced training, but not yet comfortable with solo flights right off the bat. In combat areas, it often would be used to fly senior officers where unarmed transports were considered imprudent (never take a knife to a gun fight). My father served in the CBI (China Burma India) theater of war, much later than the AVG which was actually disbanded in 1942 following Pearl Harbor - half its pilots returned to the states, the others took Army Air Corps commissions and continued flying. By the time my daddy was flying supplies across the Himalayas to General Chiang Kai-Shek, Japanese Zeros were not as plentiful and threatening - ergo I am here today because he wasn't shot down in his twenties. He did manage to log 136 missions flying C-46 and C-47 aircraft before the war ended.



Kermit Weeks, the owner of this plane (and the other 39 flyable aircraft at this large private collection air museum) brought out the P-40 for the day's flight. Every day he flies a different aircraft, and he owns several P-51's which arguably was the last great fighter plane of the second war [on our side]. My prior blog spoke about Mr. Week's PBY, and B-17, and some still shots of this P-40N. Since it takes an interminable amount of time to actually "load" videos to the blog, I won't include some shots of low level passes by this same aircraft, but suffice to say that Kermit Weeks puts on a good show for twenty minutes or so. He also spoke of his dream to make Fantasy of Flight a place where people could see their own potential. Of course it helps if your grandparents made enough money in the oil patch to help one's potential come through.

One final though to share, and that would be flight has always offered us freedom to go beyond the mundane and everyday earthly existence. Going up in an aircraft truly does allow us to slip the surly bonds of earth, reach out and touch the face of God.