Warbird Information Exchange

Contractor owns vintage air force

By STEPHEN FOX
Associated Press Writer

 The vast brown plain of the Mojave
Desert rotated slowly below as the mid-
dle-aged, helmeted pilot rolled his
gleaming silver Korean war vintage T33
jet trainer over and over.
 "I wanted to fly jets in the Air Force,
but my eyes were too bad," Leroy
Penhall was saying as he straightened
out the jet. "So I told myself I'd have
to go out and buy one. I guess I overdid
it," said the owner of Fighter Imports,
Inc., of Chino.
 He now owns nine of the hets.
 The one he was flying cruised along
at 12,000 feet, at 450 miles per hour.
His interviewer was in the rear seat,
holding down breakfast as Penhall gently
rolled and looped the venerable T-bird.
 A ruddy-faced 44-year-old mul-
timillionaire building contractor from the
beach city of Balboa, Calif., he's one
of a handful of men in the United States
who get their kicks flying old jet trainers
and fighter planes.
 It's a new sport - only a few years
old - and strictly for the rich. The
T33 Penhall flew, for example, sells for
about $100,000 and burns $100 worth of
fuel an hour.
 All the civilian jet jockeys are former

propeller plane pilots. Most of them used
to race - some still do - in a league
of such World War II fighters as the
Corsair, the Hellcat and the famous P51
Mustang.
 Penhall used to race the old warbirds
"but I just don't feel safe racing prop
planes any more," he says. "When an
engine blows you just don't pull over
to the curb."
 He patted the black instrument console
in front of him and said, "With these
beauties you can run all day at 100
per cent power and never worry about
engine failure. There are practically no
moving parts."
 Penhall graduated to prop planes after
winning several world speed titles in
motorboats. He quite boats in 1966. "I
was racing four inboards at the same
time ... It was overexposure I guess."
 Last October he sponsored the first
jet plane race in 27 years at the Califor-
nia Air Classic -and won in the T33
category with an average speed of 519
miles per hour.
 Fighter Imports, Inc., at Chino, is the
only company in the United States sell-
ing war surplus jets. He started in 1971
after Gary Levitz of Dallas, scion of a
furniture-making family, bought a T33
Penhall built from surplus parts.
 In 1972, Penhall concluded a deal with
the Canadian government to buy used
T33, a plane in which U.S. pilots trained
for the faster F86s in the early 1950s.
He plunked down close to $1 million
for 18 T33s, nine of which have been
resales."
 T33s were built in Canada and other
countries under agreements with
Lockheed Aircraft Corp. The 18 were
up for sale.
 "I said, 'I'll take them all'," says
Penhall, "but they took an awful good
look at me. They want to be sure no
one is gathering these up for a banana
war."
 Canada and Australia will sell old jets
to private individuals. The U.S. military
will not sell used fighters except as
scrap metal. An Air Force spokesman
says its jets "are completely demilitar-
ized, the wings taken off and the fuselage
cut. Essentially, the Air Force doesn't
want an individual to have the ability
to get them airborne, mount guns on it
or anything."
 The Canadian government, Penhall
says, strips its planes of radios and
armament and "they have to approve
the buyers before I can sell. Then they
track the plane through three or four
resales.
 There are about 40 civilian-owned used
jets in the United States now, 10 T33s
sold by Fighter Imports, the rest F86s
and other models built from surplus
parts or imported by private buyers.
Many are owned by commercial jet
pilots. The FAA requires prop-qualified
pilots to pass stringent written exams
qualifying them for jets.
 While most of the men racing jets
have extensive aviation backgrounds,
there are a number of well-heeled
businessmen who use their jets like se-
cond cars - or second planes.
 Gary Levitz, who also races, is one.
 Others include Jack Ormes, a Van
Nuys, Calif., attorney who bought a T33
to go with his two prop planes, and
Tom McMullen, a Placentia, Calif.,
motorcycle owner who bought a T33
"because I wanted to be a neat guy."
 "Let's face it," says McMullen, who
painted his jet with flames before
switching it to white and purple, "any
kind of plane except a business plane
is a hero thing. Some guy might wear
wild clothes to stand out in a crowds
Me, I go up and play with the clouds.
 "The jet has to be the Walter Mitty
thing for the private pilot."
 Three T33s and three F86s competed
in separate races at the California Air
Classic at Mojave, which drew 30,000
spectators who stood in scorching heat
to watch the 400-m.p.h. prop planes and
the jets whistle by. They also saw one
pilot drill into the hard desert sand
from 5,000 feet after his Bearcat pro-
peller plane's engine caught fire.
 Clay Lacy, an airline pilot with 26,000
hours aloft who raced against Penhall
at Mojave, says the risks are what at-
tract the racing pilots, all experienced
aviators with years of propeller plane
flying behind them.
 Racing jets, he says, "gives a guy
a chance to do something where he
holds his own life in his hands. I think
there's something good about doing that
every once in a while. You feel like
it's all up to you."
 Bob Laidlaw, a test pilot with more
than 3,000 hours in jets, says he races
"for the thrill of it. I like the spirit
of competition. You're flying under the
toughest jet environment there is."
 Laidlaw won the F86 race at Mojave
with an average speed of 636 m.p.h.
Like the other jet racers, he kept his
place about 50 feet off the ground over
the 15-mile oval course, marked by can-
dy striped pylons.
 Although F86s were raced at Mojave,
Penhall doesn't plan to try it again.
He hopes to have more and more T33s
competing, eventually forming a class.
 "The F86s are just too fast," Penhall
says. "You can easily exceed the plane's
structural envelope and not know it until
the tail comes off."
 The only crash of a privately owned
jet warplane happened at low speed
Sept. 24, 1972, during the attempted
takeoff of a blue and gold F86 Sabrejet
piloted by businessman Richard
Bingham. It slammed into a Sacramen
to, Calif., ice cream parlor and exploded
into flames, killing 22 persons, at least
10 of them children. Twenty-six persons,
mostly youngsters, were injured.
Bingham, 36, survived, hauled from the
flaming wreckage as he sobbed, "I'm
sorry! I'm sorry!" He reportedly gave
up flying.
 Witnesses said the jet -like the T33s
a relic of the Korean War purchased
in Canada - roared down the runway
at Sacramento's Executive Airport after
"fun" flying in an air show and ap-
peared to lose power as the pilot tried
to get it off the ground.
 The Federal Aviation Administration
takes no position on private ownership
of jet fighters or on jet racing, a
spokesman says, but requests that the
planes be fit and the pilots pass written,
oral and inflight tests of the plane they
are flying.
 Penhall's firm will teach a prospective
buyer how to fly his jet, but he still
must be approved by an FAA jet-
qualified inspector.
 The middle-aged men who race the
jets "at first glance look like a bunch
of old men standing out there," says
Penhall, "but it takes a long time to
get to that point in life where you can
do it."
 The races themselves are sanctioned
by the Professional Race Pilots Asso-
ciation of Van Nuys, Calif., a loose-knit
confederation of about 1,000 pilots and
mechanics.
 Last year's race at Mojave was the
first closed-course racing of jets since
pilots like Jimmy Doolittle and Roscoe
Turner race-tested jets for the military
at Cleveland in 1947. The next event,
planned for this fall, is a Miami-to-
Nassau round-trip race.
 Lacy claims jet racing is "one of
the greatest spectator sports today. It's
a three-dimensional thing and you can
see the whole race. The jets are pretty
evenly matched and it becomes a ques-
tion of pilot technique."
 Penhall agrees that skill is the decid-
ing factor, though with him, "It's a
gut thing . . Who's the best throttle
bender?"
 Said Laidlaw: "It's definitely not drag
racing. You have to draw the line be-
tween what is skill and what is goddam
foolhardiness. Obviously there are rules,
like not passing inside the pylon or
underneath. But that's not to say it
doesn't happen. Guys tend to build up
reputations. There are pilots who are
known as very skilled and there are
some who are thought of as goddam
fools."
 Passing is done on the outside, the
right-hand side, in jet racing. Outside
of that and a few other rules like not
cutting inside a pylon, whoever gets
around the course fastest and first wins.
 "There's a lot of prerace 'psyching'
of the other guy," says Penhall. "You
change little things on the plane. But
it doesn't happen in the turns. You have
to know where everyone is. . .who's on
your tail. If you touch someone in an
airplane 50 feet off of the ground, some-
one's going to die."