WARBIRDS NORTH AMERICAN B-25 MITCHELL
44 FLYPAST March 2018
WARBIRDS NORTH AMERICAN B-25 MITCHELL
“After the show I came back home and contacted a local fl ight
instructor and seven weeks later I had my pilot’s licence. I then
fl ew my family to Florida in a Cessna 182 that I’d bought a few
weeks earlier”
colleague. After much hard work
the business gradually took off. A
chance visit to Oshkosh rekindled
his interest in flying, and Larry’s
long-held desire to own an aircraft
took a step closer. “After
the show I came back
home and contacted a
local flight instructor and
seven weeks later I had my pilot’s
licence. I then flew my family to
Florida in a Cessna 182
that I’d bought a few
weeks earlier.
“I later joined some
friends in a syndicate to buy a
[twin-engine Piper] Seneca aircraft,
and so I had to get a multi-engine
rating. I went back to Oshkosh
the following year. I was enthralled
with warbirds, as I’ve always had a
fascination with the important role
they played in the development of
aviation and airpower.
“I had the chance to buy an UC-78
‘Bamboo Bomber’, Cessna’s first
twin-engine type, which had been
wrecked. Some friends and I restored
it over the next three years, and I
started building up radial engine,
tailwheel time. In the meantime, I
bought an Aeronca L-16.”climb to 5,000ft – which is a long
process in the Taylorcraft – and kill
the magnetos, kick it into a spin and
drop all the way down to make a
‘dead-stick’ landing. We’d come to
a stop and I’d jump out, hand-start
the engine as it didn’t have an electric
starter, and up we’d go and do it
again. Flying around with him, it was
just a ball. But then I got into high
school, and then college, plus I had
a job – all of this kept me busy and I
didn’t have any time to go flying.”
After college Larry pursued his
chosen professions, pharmacy and
long-term care, and by the mid-1970s
had started a business with a former“He rebuilt that little Taylorcraft and
then based it at Enterprise airfield in
Alabama, which had grass runways in
those days and was only a mile or so
from where I lived. He told me that
if I washed and waxed that aeroplane
he’d take me flying. So I did. The only
hangars at Enterprise were galvanised
tin structures that were open at the
front and back – being a grass airfield
in a red clay area, everything was
always getting dirty. You’d wash an
aircraft and by the following day it
would need doing again.
“We’d get in that Taylorcraft
and I’ll never forget the fun
we’d have. We’dAbove
‘Panchito’ at the Florida
International Air Show.
JIM ALLENRight
A pair of the fuselage-
mounted (deactivated)
0.50 Browning machine
guns. ‘Panchito’ has
13 – four in the forward
fuselage, three in the
nose, two in the top
turret, one each side
mid-fuselage and a
pair in the tail gunner’s
position.