landings but imposes a weight penalty on a racer.)
Blind in one eye, Frank chose not to race the
airplane at Reno, but he logged countless hours
in 232 on the airshow circuit. He later picked up
another Sea Fury, a dual-control model christened
924. After returning it to airworthy shape, he hap-
pened to be flying alongside Jim Maloney, son of
the founder of the Planes of Fame Air Museum
in Chino, who was at the controls of a so-called
Super Corsair hot-rodded with a Pratt & Whitney
R-4360 Wasp Major. (The Maloneys and air rac-
ing legend Steve Hinton made the modifications.)
Maloney’s Corsair was able to walk away from the
Sea Fury even after Sanders went to full power.
“Oh, my god!” Frank thought. “What would a Sea
Fury do with that engine?”
Frank owned a spare Sea Fury that he’d bought
after it had been surplused by the Burma air force.
Fitted with the stock sleeve-valve Centaurus engine,
it lacked the grunt to compete for victory in the
Unlimited class. Shoehorning a massive four-row,
28-cylinder Wasp Major into the existing airframe
required major reengineering. By that time, both
sons—who’d started bucking rivets and turning
wrenches as kids—had quit college to join their
father in the shop. The three of them worked flat-
out for the next year, taking off only on Christmas
Day. The finished airplane was Dreadnought.
Since neither Dennis nor Brian had enough
experience to handle such a hot-blooded air-
plane in competition, General Dynamics test
pilot Neil Anderson was installed in the cockpit.
(Anderson is best known as the F-16 demo pilot
who belly-landed the prototype—with barely a
scratch to airplane or pilot—after a gear stuck.)
In 1983, Anderson qualified fastest at Reno and
struck Unlimited Gold while setting several speed
records. Engine problems sidelined the airplane
the next year, and in 1985, Anderson in the lead
cut the final pylon on the final lap, gifting the win
to Steve Hinton in the Super Corsair. In 1986, sea-
soned racer Rick Brickert piloted Dreadnought to a
second Gold. “The Sanderses raised the bar,” says
longtime racer Matt Jackson. “When they came to
Reno with Dreadnought in 1983, they were unchal-
lenged. The airplane eclipsed everything there.”
Later, Dreadnought itself was eclipsed by a new
generation of much more extensively (and expen-
sively) modified airplanes. But the Sea Fury wasSanders’ smoke
generators show the
vortices created by
Argonaut in a
low-level pass. The
pass was part of a
practice routine
fl own at Ione before
heading to Chino for
the Planes of Fame
Air Museum
airshow.30 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com
MARK WATT