What's your first aviation memory?

[Sternjaeger]

Inspired by Extreme One's cool post on the British aircraft thread, I thought it might be cool to see what is your first aviation memory fellas:

 

I have a couple: going with my grandpa to look at aircraft taking off at the airport (I remember people boarding that plane like it happened yesterday); building my first model kits: an F-104 and a Fokker Dr.I (both of which met terrible fates   )..

Edited February 22, 2014 by Sternjaeger

[Bearcat]

Hmmmm I have to think about that.. I know I was young.. around 5 or 6 .. but the problem is I can't remember which came first.. my older cousin's Cox P-40 ... which I got my share of beatings about.. (Not real beatdown beatings.. the kind of beatings a 13 year old might give a 5-6 year old .. if he knew he had to answer to a steel working grandfather if it went bad.. at the time we both were living with my grandparents in Pittsburgh..) or if it was the 8mm copy of what I later found out was scenes from Hell's Angels the Howard Huges produced epic that the same cousin showed on a sheet hanging on the wall from a borrowed projector of his friend.. a guy named Wimpy.. and to this day I still do not know what Wimpy's real name is..... but it was around that time that my interest in aircraft was sparked and lit.. basically that flame never went out.. For Christmas of 1960 I think it was .. maybe 61.. my grandparents bought me a plastic plane of my own.. It didn't fly .. but I could hold it in my hand and run around the house going "Eeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnhhhnnhhnnnnnhhh.." without fear of reprisals.. and then too there was Sky King

 

 

It's funny .. I was crazy about Sea Hunt too.. but that never went past the bathtub.

 

 

By the time I was back in N.Y. with my mom at 7 to start the second grade I was trying my hand at model aircraft ..

[Sternjaeger]

Brilliant! Nabisco sounds more like the name of an oil company, so were they the makers of the original Oreos?

[Emgy]

Something like this

And this did have an influence, I was only into jet sims at first. Flanker series, Lock on etc.

[Rama]

Was my first flight as a UM passenger of a Caravelle from Marseille to Lyon (still remember climbing in by the rear), then changing for a DC-6 from Lyon to Nantes to meet my grand-parents there. I think I was 5 years old.

I started model kits not long time after that.

Also my grandfather had a collection of the "Illustration" magazine covering the 20th and 30th... with lots of aviation phographs and stories in.

[II./JG27_Rich]

Strange enough the DC-6s flying over our house in Okanagan Centre from the Kelowna Airport on their way to Vancouver. They would be quite low so it ways quite a sound with those four radials, I would be just turning 4 years old. Then later on my dad and I would go to the Kelowna Airport to see the Avenger water bombers in the summer if there were any fires in the area witch there were quite a few times. I have some pics somewhere from the late 60s I should dig up.

Edited February 23, 2014 by II./JG27_Rich

[=69.GIAP=C0NAN]

Don't forget Penny!

 

I had a Cox P-40 as well. What a great time! We are dating ourselves, Bearcat, but my earliest memory was of my Steve Canyon lunchbox. I was also a great fan of the war comics, popular in the 50s & 60s and - I think I remember correctly - Johnny Cloud, an American Indian (Navaho or Apache?) and his adventures as an USAAF pilot in the P-51 over Europe.

[DB605]

One of the first memories must be when we were watching planes on our local airfield with my dad. It was still pretty much in war time condition back then, sand field in dry peaty forest with few aircraft shelter remains left from ww2. It was used by Luftwaffe and then our Ilmavoimat in "lapland's war" 44-45. Later it received "overhaul" and got asphalt etc. and we spent most of the summers there with my brother as an hang-glider tow crew.

Edited February 23, 2014 by DB605

[Cybermat47]

Probably when my Dad (who's a great model maker) showed me and my brother Battle of Britain. Either that or when I first visited the Australian War Memorial.

[Scarecrow]

That would be RAF Tonado's thundering around the hills practicing low level flying where I grew up. I remember having a few of those cheap polystyrene planes that had a rubber band driven prop when i was a kid.

[DD_Arthur]

One of my earliest clear memories is an airshow.  I think it must have been around '65-66 so I would have been two or three years old.  I think it might have been RAF North Weald or RAF Northolt but I'm not too sure. We lived in North London so I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far.  Still a bit of a puzzle though.

 

What is still a vivid memory are the displays by the Avro Andover which must have been just coming into service then.  It burst a tire on landing with a big puff of smoke and rubber.  The Vulcan bomber for its sheer size and noise level and what became the party piece for RAF airshows in those days;

  a display by the Belgian airforces aerobatic team who were flying those swallow-tail jets whose name I can't remember - as they drifted off into the distance with everyone watching a Lightning would come in from the opposite direction at @50' off the runway, pull the nose up vertically and go to afterburner!!!  It just went straight up!

 We went to several of these shows in the mid-late sixties. My first flight was a 15 minute circuit in a Cessna with my mother having palpitations in the back,  lol.  Oh yeah, rows and rows of all those now extinct crap British family cars of the sixties with picnic baskets, rugs and camping stoves for making tea.

 

My other outstanding memory of aviation as a kid was our first family package holiday to Majorca mate!!!    Must have been about 1970.  We flew on a BAC111, a nice little plane.  Sometime in the flight I fell asleep.  This was in the days when commercial air travel was still a pleasurable adventure rather than the flying cattle we are treated as nowadays.  When I woke up dad was nowhere to be seen.  I asked and was ushered up front by a stewardess into the flight deck where I was astonished to find him sitting in the right hand seat talking to the captain.  I must have had eyes like saucers!! 

Edited February 23, 2014 by arthursmedley

[Pierre64]

My very first flight in an Air France Vickers Viscount, from Biarritz-Parme to Paris-Le Bourget, in 1959 or 1960. I was 5 or 6 but I remember every single details

[DD_Crash]

My earliest would be an air display at RAF Hooton Park (where the Vauxhall factory is now) in 53 or 54 when I have a feeling I saw a Sunderland flying boat. In late 54 we moved to Ellesmere Port and our house was near where the Gloster Meteors based at Hooton would turn finals and line up for landing.

[AndyJWest]

Early aviation memories? Running round the playground in primary school, arms outstretched, going "eoooow dakka dakka dakka!" - my best Spitfire impression. The rubber-band powered clip-together balsa planes with the red plastic propeller. Going to Heathrow for the day just to watch the planes taking off and landing. The time they did sonic boom tests over London as part of the Concorde development process. Visiting the BAC factory at Brooklands with the Cubs. And of course, a huge collection of Airfix kits... 

[DD_Arthur]

 Going to Heathrow for the day just to watch the planes taking off and landing. 

 

Cor!  I remember that.  They had a really good purpose built viewing terrace with a coffee shop and a small kids playground too.

 

The view was fantastic!

[MiloMorai]

From a very early age, as Lancasters, P-51s and other RCAF airplanes besides the commercials would take off over the house from Uplands. Drove the parents crazy shouting airplane, airplane all the time. Then there was Dad's Mosquito he carved from a block of aluminum while in the RCAF we were sometimes allowed to play with. Brother has it now.

 

Foggy now but was not 10 years old and drafted a 2 view (side and top) of a B-25 from pictures. Still have it. With some imagination one can see it is a B-25.

[79_vRAF_Friendly_flyer]

Then later on my dad and I would go to the Kelowna Airport to see the Avenger water bombers in the summer if there were any fires in the area witch there were quite a few times.

 

My first aviation moment too was water bombing. I guess I could have been around 10 or 11, in the late 70s. Living in what in Norway at least still was kind of a post-war era, I loved building Spitfires and Messerschmitts in 1:72 and hang them up in the ceiling. Then one summer day I saw a big plane doing some strange manoeuvering over the hills visible from my house. To my child eyes it was flying very low and very close, and I realized I knew what kind of plane it was! It was a PBY Catalina, and it must have been waterbombing. I remember feeling such joy and pride of having seen a bit of what to me was my own personal dream world in the flesh. I never saw it again, but from that day I knew I loved old planes.

[Bearcat]

Brilliant! Nabisco sounds more like the name of an oil company, so were they the makers of the original Oreos?

 

National Biscuit Company .... Yes Oreos have been around since the eraly 1900s.

[MiloMorai]

National Biscuit Company .... Yes Oreos have been around since the eraly 1900s.

 

Founded East Hanover NJ (1898) Oreos came along in 1912.

[Sternjaeger]

Founded East Hanover NJ (1898) Oreos came along in 1912.

 

National Biscuit Company .... Yes Oreos have been around since the eraly 1900s.

 

Wow! They go back a while! 

[DD_fruitbat]

Watching a Spit and a  proper 109 (not buchon) having a mock low level dogfight at the Manston airshow when i was a kid, would guess I was somewhere between 7-10 years old.

[Sternjaeger]

Watching a Spit and a  proper 109 (not buchon) having a mock low level dogfight at the Manston airshow when i was a kid, would guess I was somewhere between 7-10 years old.

 

Black 6? 

[DD_fruitbat]

I would guess it must of been, around 30ish years ago, but couldnt possibly say for sure!

[FlatSpinMan]

Spitfire on a stick, at the entrance to Christchurch Airport. Passing it at the turn into the city was the highlight of the trip from the tiny town of Pleasant Point to the big city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

It's still there actually - though they brought the real one inside to restore and replaced the one in a stick with a replica.

I'm not even sure what Mk it is. Must be very late war as it has the very pointed vertical stab, teardrop canopy, and a long nose.

 

That was my first introduction to WW2 aircraft, in "real life". There were Tigermoths and occasionally DC3's droning about the vicinity of the small local airport from time to time, too.

 

Of course I was already hooked. One of earliest memories is of the British WWI TV series, "Wings". As I got older I read "Biggles" and stories like "Johnny Red" in war comics like "Battle!".

I was beside myself with glee when I first saw "The Battle of Britain".

 

When I was about 12 I guess, my family went to Warbirds Over Wanaka. There I saw, even touched, I think, a Hurri, P40, Corsair, probably a couple of Yak's, and got to see a Spitfire dogfight with a real 109, too. They were flown by the Hanna's, I recall.

[cobbman11]

When I was three, my grandfather took me to an airshow where I was allowed to ride in the cockpit of a DC-3.

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

Mmm... Airshows and flyins, static and flying models.  Helping an amphibian something off a sand bar in Tampa Bay, going to the 94th Aero Squadron at St. Pete-Clearwater for lunch and listening to the tower frequency while watching planes come and go then to the airport museum on the way out.  Sad end to those planes.  There was a B-17 there - I don't know what happened to it - but many of the airplanes on display got dumped in a field near Ft. Meade, Fl and left to rot when the museum fell on hard times.  I heard at least on of them, a P2V, wound up as an artificial reef.

[Gort]

Great question, Stern. I'll have to cogitate on that one. Might be my father, a WWII TBF plane captain and gunner taking me to a glider meet. He would take us to the airport often and show us airplanes. That's what is missing today, too many airports are fenced off.

 

Ever notice how they call aviators "flyers" in the old movies? Like the sound of that a lot for some reason. Flyer...

[Sternjaeger]

Great question, Stern. I'll have to cogitate on that one. Might be my father, a WWII TBF plane captain and gunner taking me to a glider meet. He would take us to the airport often and show us airplanes. That's what is missing today, too many airports are fenced off.

 

Ever notice how they call aviators "flyers" in the old movies? Like the sound of that a lot for some reason. Flyer...

 

..and a great early memory there! I guess there was pretty much no other job you could think of doing when you were a kid! And I agree about "Flyer".. 

 

I bet your dad doesn't/didn't think much of you young kids landing your fancy jets on the deck, landing a TBF was a whole different story! 

[J2_Trupobaw]

My parents lived maybe 30 minutes of walk from sport / agricultural airfield when I was born, so single engine planes (mostly  M-18 Dromaders) were flying over my playground at low altitude from before I remember. We played at following parachutists jumping from an An-2 as long as we couls see them and often walked with parents to airfield itself . Later, I befriended a neighbourhood kid who lived on 6th floor facing airfield and we watched takeoffs/landings from his room.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Trupobaw

[inferno]

Heh, mine sound silly compared to all these stories about real planes. 

 

I got Ace Combat 4 when I was a kid and fell in love with planes. Picked up IL-2 1946 a couple of years later and now I'm here.