A Sea Fury thread

[Sisu]

This link should get a nice video of Frank's son Dennis doing his version of Frank's show in 924 at the Chino show in 2016.

dennis sanders sea fury - Search Videos

www.bing.com

 

[Wurger]

 

[Sisu]

924 had a busy 20 year career before an engine faulure in 1998 put her down for a ten year bare bones restoration. I had lots of chances to photograph her in that time. Here she is, ready to go home after Reno 1987. Sea Furies always look to me like they want to go flying...

 

[Wurger]

 

[Sisu]

I did love 924, though she was around enough for me to take her for granted. The big problem for me though was that T.20 canopy. Some great Sea Furies wore it including the mighty Dreadnought, but to me the fighter canopies always have looked infinitely better.

This fighter canopy is on N232J, which we met in the original post. Frank restored and sold it about 1978 painted in this simple and attractive Canadian scheme. This particular photo is at Reno during a practice period. In 1988, when this shot was done the airplane had been newly sold to a well known British collector named Robs Lamplough. He was talked into bringing it to race at Reno before shipping it off to England. That was a fast year with more entrants than could ultimately race, and Lamplough had no idea how to go fast under Reno conditions, so Dennis Sanders is taking him around the course to show him how to do it most efficiently and most quickly. Lamplough did great when racing days came.

 

[Wurger]

 

[AL90]

Few of my old Sea Fury photos.....
1st one is, think, at Mildenhall, Red one is Spencer Flack's G-FURY, third one was on the gate at RNAY Fleetlands along with a Firefly and Wessex.
Alan.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Sisu]

The aesthetic examination of Sea Fury canopy practices is more complicated, though. There were at least two quite different canopies on FB.11s of the 1970s and 1980s. I think this is a stock fighter canopy, on Ellsworth Getchell's beautiful restoration of N26. This airplane served in Australia and was imported into the US in the 1960s. Getchell got it in the late 1970s.

Getchell passed away a couple of years ago but the airplane is still with us. N260X

Reading this gives a good sense of what is involved in putting something like this into the air:

Aerial Visuals - Airframe Dossier - Hawker Sea Fury FB.11, s/n WH587 RAN, c/n 41H-636334, c/r N260GF

This canopy is pretty small -- really not enough headroom for a back seat.

 

[Wurger]

 

[MIflyer]

Here is an actual operational one that came to grief.

 

[Sisu]

I think this is the same size canopy as on the Getchell #105. This airplane was owned in the mid 1980s by a California character named Wally McDonnell. The internet is full of conflicting and incorrect information about the airplane. It was (I think) actually built as a T.20 and was used as a 2 seat target tug in Germany. It appeared in the U S as a single seat conversion in the 1970s. Wally operated this beautiful fighter for several years til it was destroyed (along with a Mustang) in a big hangar fire in California.

 

[Sisu]

The canopies on Frank Sanders 232 and Lloyd Hamilton's #16 back in the early 1970s were quite different, and carried a back seater fairly comfortably.

 

[Wurger]

 

[MIflyer]

Note a difference in the cockpits for the postwar exhibition birds versus the wrecked operational one is big headrest. Obviously, that headrest was armor plate, and aside from accessing a rear seat, it represents a lot of unneeded weight.

But Charlie Hillard, probably the top acro pilot in the world, took a Sea Fury, got rid of that of that headrest and installed an R-4360 as well as F-80 brakes; this proved to be a deadly combination. In 1996, following an acro display at Sun and Fun in Lakeland, Charlie's Sea Fury went over on its back and his head was so compressed down that he was unable to breathe and died, not from being crushed but due to suffocation.

 

[Sisu]

Charlie's Sea Fury had a 3350, and never got a 4360. These photos show a beautifully restored to military stock T.20 (restored by Frank Sanders' sons in 2007). It has all the original heavy structure that has been left off almost all civilian restorations, and shows the headrests well.

 

[Gnomey]

Good shots!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Sisu]

So by the mid 1980s there were a number of Centaurus Sea Furies in the American West. This one was another ex target tug, brought over from England where it was operated at various times by Doug Arnold and Spencer Flack. Flown for a couple of years in California in bare metal, it then started a series of owners as "Dragon of Cymru" VX281. It eventually went back to England where it has been crashed a couple of times.

 

[Sisu]

The Dragon