Nine years ago, thru the Collings Foundation, I got to fulfill a bucket list item and fly a P-51 Mustang https://www.fordstreet.net/nyapproach/2009/09/index.html After we had landed and were taxiing back in, and the pilot thanked me for coming out to support the Foundation, I had teased him that if they ever got their hands on a two-seat Spitfire, just give me a call and I would come fly again! At the time, the UK did not allow “tourist” flights in antique aircraft as they were deemed too dangerous. However, in recent years, the CAA changed their minds and allowed the flights.
In November 2018, Michiko and I finally made it back to London after a hiatus of a few years. It was a fantastic trip with a couple of brilliant afternoon teas, a number of great meals, a couple of museum visits, a West End show (Hamilton!) and, the icing on the cake for me, a Spitfire flight!
When we decided to get back to London, I started doing some research. My buddy Milton, for his 50th birthday that same year, had flown a Spitfire with the Boultbee Flight Academy (https://www.boultbeeflightacademy.co.uk) during the summer out of the Royal Air Force museum in Duxford. So I wasn’t being overly creative, as I had just turned 50 and this was going to be my mid-life crisis gift to myself.
As I mentioned, the trip was a terrific success, but the Spitfire flight was scheduled for the very end, the day before we were leaving. Knowing the UK’s fickle weather, especially along the shore of the English Channel, I had butterflies in my stomach the whole week praying the weather would cooperate for me, as we had no room in the schedule for a rain delay. Over the course of the trip, we had a couple of rainy, blustery days but ultimately, it all came together weatherwise.
The morning of the flight finally dawned (I had slept fitfully in anticipation of the day and anxiety of not oversleeping). Because of the early start, we had hired a car service and driver to take us down to Boultbee’s HQ down at Solent Airport (EGHF), about 90 miles south of London.
Packing for the London trip, I had brought my own NOMEX flight suit with me from my Civil Air Patrol flying days, with its American flag patch on the shoulder. When I had booked my flight, I had purchased the Boultbee cloth flight patch with my name embroidered but unfortunately, it wasn’t ready, so I wore the basic Spitfire “PILOT” patch instead.
Michiko and I, along with another passenger, sat through a 30 minute safety briefing video, mostly about the inherent risks of flying in an antique fighter plane, with a review of emergency procedures including crash landings, water landings, in-flight fire and how to bail out and use the parachute. After the video, the staff quizzed us on the cockpit escape procedures to ensure we had retained the knowledge. We were then issued our additional gear, including the flight helmet, a life preserver with emergency beacon and an emergency knife (for cutting ourselves out of the harness if necessary). I was looking pretty “Top Gun” if I do say so myself.
Once finished with the safety briefing and signing my life away on various forms, we were introduced to our pilot, Jon Gowdy. To say that he was freakishly handsome and looked every bit the Hollywood part of a fighter pilot would be an understatement! I would come to learn that in addition to the fun of flying a Spitfire, Jon is an airline pilot and also part of a cool aerobatics team that uses pyrotechnics in their display, including flares and trailing spark mechanisms for dusk shows! You can find more info here about Jon, his wedding to his pilot wife, and the aerobatics team here:
Credit: Daily Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10937696/Aerobatic-team-creates-stunning-pyrotechnic-display.html
https://www.firefliesdisplays.com/team
Credit: MARIA SZEKELYHIDI - EBOURNE IMAGES https://www.ebourneimages.com/blog/pilot-wedding/
Kitted out, I walked out with Jon to the waiting Spitfire on the tarmac. The 2-seat Spitfire, with the registration G-ILDA, sitting there in full sunshine, was more beautiful than any of the other Spitfires I’d ever seen before (granted not too many except in museums), maybe because my heart was beating so hard knowing I was going to fly in this one!
A small mobile staircase was positioned next to the rear cockpit so that I could carefully clamber up and settle in to the quite cozy cockpit. Nestled down in my seat, my knees were pressed against the sides snugly. The line crew member helped me strap into the parachute harnesses first and then the seat harnesses over the top of those. I donned my flight helmet, adjusted the fold-down access door on my left (gives you a little more room to swing your legs in and out, adjusted my seat height a little lower and closed up my half of the canopy.
Jon settled himself quickly into the front cockpit and finished his pre-flight checks and called for engine start. Even through the muffling of the helmet and internal headset, it was a beautiful sound as the Merlin Rolls-Royce engine quickly roared to life with a puff of white smoke. Without too much run up delay, Jon had us taxiing all the way around the northwest edge of the field out to the active runway, 23. The Spit has a water cooled engine, so it doesn’t like sitting still on the ground too long since not enough air is flowing to keep the engine cool. Because the Spitfire is a tail-dragger airplane and you can’t see over the nose while taxiing, we gently jinked left and right so that Jon could watch ahead on the taxiway for any obstacles.
Download DSCN0486 (Video clip of engine start)
After a very brief engine run-up and magneto check, Jon released the brakes and we accelerated quickly down the runway. In no time the tail came up and a second or so later the wheels broke ground. Easing the nose down slightly, Jon pulled the gear up as we roared low down the length of the runway and climbed up away from the airport over the English Channel before entering a right downwind departure to the north east. (Michiko caught the takeoff on her iphone—turn the sound up to hear the magical sounds of the Spitfire takeoff!)
Download IMG_0824 Download IMG_0823
Below is the YouTube link for video of my flight. Unfortunately, the sound system wasn’t working well, but the video is great. It’s a 360-degree video, so you may can orient the view towards a different direction, rather than having to stare at me the entire flight!
https://youtu.be/pINBUC_RVsI
As we cleared away from the airport towards the east, Jon pointed me where he wanted me to head and gave me the controls and we cruised over beautiful pastoral scenes, lush green meadows dotted with sheep, lined with hedgerows bordered by trees and streams. I spotted a military helicopter below us off to the left heading in the opposite direction. Jon pointed me a little more east past a quaint countryside village with a beautiful stone church and we circled over a grass strip he flies out of. I could spot a couple of small planes tucked away at one end of the field.
The Spitfire really does fly by fingertips. Even more so than the Mustang, if you just THINK in a certain direction, that’s where she heads! For all the power of the roaring engine up front, she flits so gracefully/effortlessly around the sky, including in climbs. The large rudder makes her so sensitive and coordinated turns so easy.
Jon had me follow a ridge-line of a small escarpment to the east into a practice area and then he did a couple clearing turns and demonstrated some aerobatic maneuvers for me, including aileron rolls, barrel rolls, and loops. On the first steep turn, Jon almost made me sick....I was looking out to the left towards the sea when he yanked the plane to the right, leaving my stomach about a kilometer behind and trying to catch up!
Soon, he gave me the controls back and I got to do some aerobatics with the Spit. Oh my! See the YouTube video link above for the order of fun. Jon walked me through the maneuvers, including some loops, loops with rolls at top and a dive through the clouds; steep climbing turns with dives into the clouds; aileron rolls and barrel rolls in both directions; more steep turns with climbs or dives through puffy clouds. I was truly in heaven!
I’m not quite sure what the airspace rules are in the UK but, just like the High Flight poem (see sidebar below), we were dancing through “the skies on laughter-silvered wings” and “joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds”. Rolling, banking, looping, climbing and diving we dodged and weaved around clouds and then punched through them, coming out the bottom to green fields below or erupting upwards into the sunlight, seeing our shadow dance on the surface of the cloud next to us, surrounded by a halo.
High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung.
High in the sunlit silence, hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting winds along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
For more about Magee, a 19 year old Spitfire pilot in World War 2 who wrote this beautiful ode a little more than a week after his first flight in a Spitfire and only months later died in a mid-air collision during a training flight, please see here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee_Jr.
Too soon, the flight came to an end and Jon had me point her towards home, following the shoreline south west towards the field. We made a low pass at pattern altitude down the runway and then broke left to lose speed and entered a left downwind and a short approach to the runway. Jon set her down perfectly and taxied us in, with an appreciative crowd snapping away with cameras like paparazzi!
While I was flying, it turned out that Michiko met Mark Rutley, a professional photographer who was there snapping photos (www.markrutleyphotography.co.uk). We ended up exchanging cards and a few days later he sent me a link to the online gallery with a number of fantastic shots, including a number of which I purchased for prints and ultimately framed in a couple of collages.
