Studer Community Institute

Vintage planes to give veterans wings

June 15, 2015
/ Staff Reports
/ community-dashboard

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the 2015 Veterans Flight will honor WWII veterans with a fly-over in vintage military-training airplanes before the Pensacola Beach Air Show in July. Pensacola attorney and pilot Roy Kinsey, along with Stearman Flight - a national formation training organization, has organized the fly-over. It will include WWII veteran pilots who received their primary flight training in Stearman aircrafts. This is the second year that Kinsey has organized this event. Around eight to 10 volunteer Stearman pilots are expected to fly the vintage planes to Pensacola for the air show on July 10 and 11. “I sent out an exploratory email to see if there was sufficient interest to do it again this year and I was blown away by the positive response,” said Kinsey. “Veterans Flight 2015 will be even bigger than last year.” Stearman biplanes are 1940’s military training aircraft that were used to teach WWII pilots the basic skills they would need to fly high-performance fighters and bombers in combat. Boeing built more than 8,500 Stearmans, along with enough spare parts to build another 2,000 airplanes. “Stearmans are two-seat biplanes which are slow, good-weather only planes,” said Kinsey. “In today’s world you might think of them as being airborne Harley-Davidsons. They’re big, slow, make a lot of noise and are great fun to fly.” The Stearmans will fly the World War II veteran pilots above Pensacola Beach, starting at 9 a.m. both Friday, July 11, and Saturday, July 12. The second flights will take off at 9:45 a.m. “This is a small way to honor and thank these veterans,” said Kinsey. “By putting these pilots back in the cockpit, we are letting them again experience the airplane in which they learned to fly.” The flights will be staged from Pensacola Aviation Center, located on Jerry Maygarden Drive on the east side of Pensacola International Airport. The volunteer Stearman pilots are coming from as far away as Atlanta, Ga., Nashville, Tenn. and Starkville, Miss. Kinsey says they’ve recruited more than 20 veterans to fill the seats and enjoy the flights. Among those who will make the nostalgic flights are former Navy pilots Dick Pace, Cass Phillips and Frank Heule of Pensacola, along with Army Air Corps veterans John Beard, Mel Bryant and LeRoy Manor, who live in the Fort Walton area. “I really hope the flights will be special, not only for the veterans, but also for people watching,” says Kinsey. He hopes when air show spectators see the Stearmans and veterans flying overhead, they will take a moment to appreciate the sacrifices veterans made to protect the freedoms Americans enjoy today.

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Vintage planes to give veterans wings

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