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The pilot: Unknown
The airplanes: Supermarine Spitfire
The mission: Wings over St. Louis Airshow
The memory: A flight in a Cessna 182 took two friends and myself to the Downtown St. Louis Airshow on a beautiful summer day that would be concluded with the Blue Angels. The airshow was a myriad of wonderful performers and warbirds painting the blue skies with their passes. The sounds of the engines provided the soundtrack for what was just a wonderful and very memorable day. Seeing a Supermarine Spitfire passing by was truly a treat. It’s just amazing to think what these machines accomplished 80+ years ago. It’s a privilege to see them flying still today.
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What a great photographer wonderful Pilot very active in the aviation world. I was one of the two friends that he took to St. Louis. What a great airshow got to Fly in a B 29 Doc it was fabulous. What a treat my daughter accompanied us. She’s a 747 Pilot too so Looking forward to Oshkosh 2026.
What a beautiful picture that captures the image of speed — I just wish it included sound as well! When I was a student at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) I was part of a study group that looked into aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturing in the US, France, and the UK. At the Rolls Royce factory in the UK, we were in a large hangar where they were displaying to our group about one of their commercial engines. However, on the floor of the hangar was a Spitfire that was in to have its Rolls Royce Merlin engine worked on. Seeing as the majority of our group were pilots, most of us had a hard time paying attention to the speaker as we all wanted to do was go climb onto the Spit! One of the fun things about visiting these various manufacturers was we picked up some swag and at the RR factory, we got a keychain with the RR emblem on it. I asked if one of the keychains had a key on it to a Rolls parked outside. Got a lot of laughs, but no key!
Dale, that’s a great story. What an opportunity to see that airplane in the RR factory! I’d sure love to get to fly one! The Spitfire in the photo was flying at the Spirit of St. Louis Airshow. I got to speak to the pilot. The museum had just put an additional 30 gallon gas tank in which gave another hour of flight! He was worried about the long taxi from his static display to the runway, and sure enough, he overheated and had to shut down for a bit. They were definitely built for a singular purpose!