Ruth flying a T-34 with one son and Frank in
924 with the other. Although she never officially
checked out in the Sea Fury, she flew it from the
back seat so often that Frank called her “his auto-
pilot.” “We’d take off from Chino, and it would
be my airplane until we got to the next airport,”
she recalls. “But there was no gear handle in the
back. So if something had happened to Frank, we
would have crashed.” She laughs. “But it would
have been a controlled crash.”
Ruth is 81, straight-backed, and vivacious. She
taught high school until 1981, then became an equal
partner in her husband’s aviation business. She
supported Frank’s decision to trade the T-6 and
$5,000 for a P-51 Mustang, and he got involved
in air racing by building exhaust stacks for the
F8F Bearcat that Darryl Greenamyer flew to six
Unlimited Golds at Reno. (Today the Bearcat is
on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air and
Space Museum.)
By the end of the 1960s, the couple had traded
cars and Arizona for airplanes and southern
California. Frank’s first warbird project for a
customer was a P-51 that had bellied in at Reno.
Next came a P-40. Then in 1970, in what would
be a life-changing decision, Ruth took out a $3,500
loantobuya cratecontainingone-and-a-halfSea
Furyssalvagedfroma fieldinCanada.
Workinginitiallyinthealleybehindhishouse,
herebuiltoneoftheSeaFurys— 232 —andlaterflewit to victory in the California 1000 at Mojave in- Later, the airplane would be transformed
into a full-on racer and, owned by Mike Brown
and known as September Fury, go on to win the
Gold Unlimited race at Reno in 1996. (Today,
coincidentally, 232 is back in the Sanders shop,
being returned to closer-to-stock form.)
Like its American analog, the Grumman F8F
Bearcat, the British-built Sea Fury arrived too
late to see action during World War II, but rep-
resented the apogee of fighter technology prior
to the jet age. It is one of the fastest production
singlepiston-engineaircrafteverbuilt.It’sbig—
almostthreefeetlongerthana Mustangwith 45
moresquarefeetofwingarea.(Thatamplewing
providedtheliftrequiredforcarrierlaunchesandTHE BRITISH-BUILT SEA FURY
REPRESENTED THE APOGEE
OF FIGHTER TECHNOLOGY
PRIOR TO THE JET AGE.One of the 14
Sea Furys that
Dennis Sanders has
restored over the
years, Furias is
about to be loaded
on a fl atbed truck
at Paine Field in
Seattle for
transportation to
the Sanders facility
in California.September 2019 AIR&SPACE 29MARK WATT