Warbird Information Exchange

Canadair CL-13 Sabre night firing at RCAF Station Uplands in 1953. (DND Archives Photos)

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Zero Surprise!!...

I'm guessing the camera wasn't remotely fired either.

Because it is so ubiquitous, I think we take the Sabre for granted but these photos show it to be an extremely attractive design.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
Note political free signature.
I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.

I agree, I've always thought the Korean War era had some of the most attractive jet designs.

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Many, many years ago my father was part of a Sabre groundcrew (he was the engine tech or "fitter") in Chatham, New Brunswick. Chatham then (if I recall correctly) was a Sabre OTU, and on one course one student pilot hung around with the groundcrew quite a bit trying to learn all he could about the airplane, and the groundcrew took a liking to him.

Though a competent pilot, it turned out that this particular guy couldn't shoot worth (you know) and eventually was in danger of washing out if he didn't pull off a good score on the target drogue on his last shoot, and he was pretty distraught about the end of his Sabre dream. Enter a particular ground crew:

While the armorers were reloading the two guns on the returning Sabre our sprog was to fly (gunnery training often used just two loaded guns) and the previous pilot was getting out, somehow the aircraft went u/s and became unavailable. Mounting instead the spare Sabre parked off to the side for just such a contingency, the crew chief and the armorer, while helping the pilot strap in and hook up told him "Sir - no matter what - fire all your ammunition - all of it. Don't come back with anything left" and then they jumped off.

The pilot went out and made a pretty creditable gunnery showing and eventually joined an active duty fighter squadron and happily flew the Sword for many hours - because my father's ground crew had loaded all six guns on the spare (four with no tracer) and then disabled the scheduled aircraft on it's turnaround. Moral of the story: always take good care of your ground crew!

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

Pay your surgeon very well!

Cool story Dan.