WWII Pin Up Girl

Jenny on the Harvard

As I slowly come back to painting with my summer being insanely busy, my family had a nice treat. Some restored WWII airplanes came to visit our city.

And my beautiful wife with her "pin up girl" style got some very cool pictures taken (by me of course) on these airplanes.

My boy even got to sit in one of them and help push the plane to get refueled.  He has all of the sudden decided that he is going to be a pilot when he grows up.  Well...actually he already thinks he knows how to fly because he plays flying games on the Xbox.

Cornell

One of the cool things was that the Cornell was originally based in Regina (my hometown) during the war. They found it rotting somewhere in the states and brought it back up and restored it. The entire airplane is made out of wood. I guess it was an engineering marvel for its time, since there was a shortage of metal during the war and they needed to use alternative materials to build aircraft.  This plane is absolutely beautiful.  As the Pilot Todd Lemiux says its a flying artifact.

I always wondered why these planes were yellow.  Apparently it was because there were so many of them up during the war at one time that they painted them yellow so they could easily see each other....Go figure.


We would have never even know about this event unless my wife didn't dress up in her pin up girl style at a wedding we were at. The pilots were staying at the same hotel, and thought it would be awesome for her to get pictures taken on these vintage airplanes.

Harvard

For me the coolest plane was the Harvard. This is what a WWII plane should look like. It was used during the war to train Spitfire and Hurricane fighter pilots. This particular plane was built in the 50's however.

The BEST PART of the whole day for me was I got to talk to a WWII veteran. who used to fly these planes, Oh man the stories he told. I could have listened to him all day. One story he told me was that one of his buddies was on a mission over Germany in a Lancaster Bomber. He was the navigator or something. He told me his friend didn't know how to fly by he knew ever inch of the plane. Almost everyone on the plane was dead including the pilot and copilot so he had to fly the plane back. The tower told him to set the plane down about half way down the runway. He Said "F-that" I'm using the whole runway. Later he found out that the tower saw his wheels come with in 6 inches of the farmers fence as he tried to land at the start of the runway.

Thank you to the pilots for the great hospitality and historical information. I look forward to see you again.
I'm really proud of what they are doing to try and preserve these aircraft. 
Thank you to;

Todd Lemieux - Cornell pilot
Liam O'Connel - Stearman pilot
Ulrich Bollinger - Harvard pilot

 Here are the websites you can visit for more information.
 http://www.vintagewings.ca/en-ca/aircraft.aspx
http://www.yellowwings.ca

I will have my Soviet Red God of War ready soon.
I also have a tournament Aug 20th and will be (hopefully) painting lots again in the next month.
Sorry to my 2 followers that I've been away so long.

Enjoy some more pictures of our day.  Also a few crappy video's.  Camera wasn't so good.  I have more videos' form a differant camera I haven't uploaded yet.  see how those turn out and i'll post them later.

Ulrich pilot of the Harvard

Todd pilot of the Cornell

Even propeller is made out of wood.

Harvard on the runway

Jenny and Dhamon with the Cornell

Stearman

Stearman on the runway

Jenny on the Harvard

Dhamon helping refuel the Cornell

Half a boy pushing the Cornell

Putting the Harvard to bed

Stearman most popular to fly.

Boy and I on the Harvard.

Dhamon in the Cornell