EAA AirShow 2007 - WWII reenactment

[RetroToday]

Found this cool video of a WWII reenactment camp on the EAA website.
It's great to see the golden era brought back to life in different ways, even though the radio in the movie is a reproduction and it slightly bothers me.....

Click this link to see the video:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid626910413/bclid1137832815/bctid1155109144

If it doesn't play right away, you may have to select it from a menu to the right of the screen.

Enjoy.

 

[dhermann1]

I was an EAA member for several years, but if you're not able to actually fly, it's not much fun. I've been meaning to get to Oshkosh for 30 plus years now. Well, maybe someday. For a two week period it'd the busiest airport in the world.

 

[KilroyCD]

I used to go to Oshkosh almost every summer, and I saw the beginnings of the reenactor involvement at Airventure. I really wanted to pack my gear and join them, but as I was an aircaft judge, I really couldn't. Now that I've acquired a mortgage that makes trips to Oshkosh a mere dream for the time being, I don't think I'll be able to join "Wiz" and his crew anytime soon. Maybe someday...

 

[RetroToday]

Hi guys,

I've only been to Oshkosh once, but we did it well.
Flew down in a DC-3, stayed the weekend in a tent on the airfield, right beside the terminals.

In the early 90s I was a kid just getting VERY immersed in Art Deco design history and was at the time stuck on golden age aviation culture.

I admired Dave Stevens' art in comic books and in 1990 saw the beautiful Gee Bee model Z air racer (repro.) in the Rocketeer movie - that had me determined to go to the Oshkosh airshow and see the classic planes. Took a couple years, but I made it there.

After we landed, saw the sights and went to bed. We woke up next morning to the nice sound of a B-17 bomber starting its motors in a preflight check. Little did we know, they moved it right beside us in the night as we slept.

We met Delmar Benjamin who put on a great show with his Gee Bee R-2 racer (repro.). Saw a lot of other great classic stuff in the EAA buildings and on the field. I just read on a website that his R-2 was retired to Kermit Weeks' "Frontiers of Flight" Museum, but I don't see it on the permanent inventory. http://www.fantasyofflight.com/collection.htm

Will have to go back to Oshkosh again soon.

 

[KilroyCD]

Like you, my first visit to Oshkosh was on a DC-3, or actually a Navy R4D belonging to the Mid Atlantic Air Museum. Shortly after we taxied in and parked, I was exiting the aircraft only to look up when I heard "Merlin music". Overhead was Bill Greenwood's Spitfire. I hadn't even gotten all the way out of the plane and my week was already made, as the Spit is my favourite aeroplane of all time.
I've made about a dozen trips to Oshkosh since that first one, but none since 2002. I'm looking to get back again sometime.

 

[RetroToday]

Hi Kilroy,

Very cool that you also got to Oshkosk the first time same as I did.

The Spitfire is also among one of my several favourite planes, although admittedly, I have a soft spot for Art Deco designs - so pre WWII stuff usually interests me the most.

I grew up going every year to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum airshow in the Hamilton, Ontario area (link below) since I was little, with my Dad and brother.

Sadly, they had a bad fire in 1993 that destroyed their prized Spitfire, Hurricane XII and TBM Avenger. Luckily, their now-prized Avro "Lancaster" Bomber was on the other side of the fire wall, so not all was lost. I watched the Lancaster get a little more complete every year until it was complete. I was lucky enough to get some pictures of me as a kid beside all those great planes, still flying and the lost ones.

http://www.warplane.com/pages/aircraft.html

You can see several of the influences that went into Air Racing of the 1930s in the design of the warplanes. Supposedly, even the initial design of the Japanese Zero was copied off of Howard Hughes' airspeed record-setting plane, the H-1 racer.

Man, I'm into way too many subject areas of history. But, I couldn't have it any other way, I just love to see all the way allthings were back in the day!