Warbird Information Exchange

Here's a good one. On or about October 4th 2006 at 3:00 PM CST, a Maryland Heights Police cruiser drove onto the East/West grass runway at Creve Coeur Airport near St. Louis, Missouri and with lights flashing and siren wailing, pulled over a Piper J-3 Cub. Details and hopefully some video to follow as more information becomes available. I'm not making this up.

It is possible that this situation was related to the fact that somebody driving down the road near the airport around 2:00 PM CST, reported to local emergency officials that a big Red biplane burst into flames and trailing black smoke, crashed onto Creve Coeur Mill Road, near the airport's entrance. At or about the same time, perhaps the same caller also phoned this report into a local talk radio station who dispatched "The Big 550 Jet Copter" which in turn caused other news rooms to quickly send out their fleets. It's amazing that all the fire engines and police cars did not collide with the news trucks driving all over the airport in search of the crash.

It is interesting to note that on or about October 4th at about 2:00 PM CST, a Blue and White Pitts Special did turn it's air show smoke system on base to final and made a "missed approach" to the airport's North/South runway. It then landed and was put into a hangar. Like most airshow smoke, it was White. We are still searching for the big Red biplane that burst into flames and trailed black smoke all the way to the point where it crashed on the road.

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

I hope the officer is well versed in airfield operations before he drives onto a runway.

Perhaps the witness got the number of wings wrong: it was really a triplane and the ghost of von Richtofen is haunting your airfield. If this apparition happens regularly, you should begin selling tickets.

August

Al,
A cousin of mine Earl Carlyle had a flying service called Carlyle Flying Service at Clover Field was tacketed for landing his plane (Waco?) on the main street by the pier in Santa Monica and got a ticket reportidly the first for a airplane. He was Rudolph Valentino's chaeuffer and dropped rose petals over his grave during the funeral in 1926. He was killed in a crash at Clover Field when his young student froze and grabbed the stick putting the plane into the "deadly tail spin". I'll have to dig out some newspaper about it I have.

During the Fresno B-25/Doolittle reunion a few years back, we had a citabria land on the taxiway, where the B-25s were parked, with the wingtip clearing us by 5 or so feet! As he went by a cop car was chasing him. I think Ted Stewart has it on video.

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Don't touch my junk!!