Florida warbirds2/20/2023 ![]() It turned out those stars were actually lights on the ground. He thought the student was flying upside down. Stallings remembered one night when he looked out the cockpit window and saw stars below the plane. Exhausted instructors led to fatal crashes. The B-24s could pack a punch in combat, he said, but they weren’t loaded with bombs and ammunition for flight training.Īt one point they were training pilots 24 hours a day, and Stallings said they learned the hard way what a mistake that was. “When the chance came for me to go four-engine, I took it,” Stallings said. But eventually he took advantage of an opportunity to train pilots in powerful four-engine B-24s. They chose the top 10 percent of each graduating class to be instructors, so Stallings was off to Alabama for more school.Īt first he taught British cadets how to fly single-engine planes, and then he taught Americans. So, he drove down to MacDill Field in Tampa to sign up for service and was commissioned in November 1941 after nine months of training. He could have finished college, but figured that would only delay the inevitable.īesides, he said, “I would have been a mess of a foot soldier." ![]() He said that when he was racking up flight hours for that license he used to rent a trainer at Jacksonville’s Imeson Airport for $9 an hour. Just seeing the B-24 was enough for Stallings, who grew up in Jacksonville and already had a private pilot’s license when he came home from the University of Virginia to find a draft notice waiting for him. Searching For Lost Warbirds In Florida Volume 2 Widner, Robert on. Flight instruction in the Mustang runs $2,200 for a half-hour and $3,200 for an hour. People with higher aspirations and bigger budgets can go up for a 30-minute flight in one of the bombers for $450. Adults can get a look inside for $15, and children under 12 can see for $5. The Valiant Air Command Warbird Air Museum in Titusville, Florida, features aircraft WW1 to Desert Storm. ![]() The three planes will be on display from 9 a.m. “I didn’t understand it until I got up inside one,” Rubin said of the B-24. Florida Warbirds is a non-profit 501(c)(3) Corporation. When the bombs didn’t drop, he said, they often gave them a kick. Rubin said his dad told him how different parts of the plane didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. ![]()
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