Post amazingly cool pictures of aircraft (Volume 3)

Some of those guys must have had some amazing stories to tell.

We used to have a visiting lecturer at uni, Darrol Stinton, who was an ETPS and then RAE test pilot. Fascinating bloke to talk to. Apparently at one point he had the record for the most G puled in an aircraft and survived after being the first person to survive a Vampire breaking up.

From the mid late 70s Dad flying the Airmacchi 339 over the Alps.

No had retired from the Airforce and was writing for Flight International at the time, but got invited to fly all sorts of things. The RAF invited him back to fly Hawk, Harrier, Harrier on the ski jump, Jaguar. He turned down Tornado because they only offered him a passenger flight not at the controls!

Stingy. I'm sure the Italians would have given him a go.

Err, why?

And better fuel economy

...and then when they finally get where they're going, they find that someone left the F-35's horizontal tail surfaces behind.

That entered production though, the B17 with allisons was a prototype hedge against production issues with the turbo charged R1820, but was so late it became an irrelevancy.