Bill Arnot and his B-25 "Silver Lady" at Breckenri

[marine air]

I went to a cpuple of those about 20 years ago and they were great. Howard's deal back then he would tell folks is "I'll come to yours if you'll come to mine" and I will fly a lot but you have to fly a lot when you come to Breckenridge. He went to a lot of shows in the Corsair, and people would reciprocate, it was very much a flying weekend. I remember you would probably be woken up by a flight of Corsairs or something, and then that radial engine hum would persist until well after dark each day. It was common to see 4, 5, 6, even 8 Corsairs up in formation. Howard pretty much "owned" the town and he liked to fly low and fast everywhere.
It was what I imagined a Pacific base might have been like. Mr. Arnot flew the B-25 constantly and they tried to fill every seat. I got introduced to Tex Hill, Arnot's pilot at the time. I asked him what he flew in the A.V.G. as I had not heard of him. He said the B-25! I got promised a ride with Tex in the B-25, but got bumped by Jeff Pardue's 8 SAE fraternity brothers, who didn't even want to go as they had hangovers. Imagine my surprise to find out later all about Tex Hill. Still have never gotten a ride in a B-25. That was "Fast Eddie" firing the tracer rounds in the 50 calibers from atop the halftrack. Great times.

[Steve Rister]

Breckenridge. Man, those were the days! I really enjoyed the flying with our Navion. We flew with Mustangs, Corsairs, Hellcat, YAK's and many trainers. Attended 13 years with my video camera and have started archiving old VHS footage to DVD. Seems like yesterday.

Stephen

So what was the reason that they stopped the shows at Breckinridge? I'm sure I've heard somewhere but at the moment I'm drawing a blank.

[corsair166b]

Can anyone find themselves in this '92 shot from Bill Arnot's hangar?

IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/corsair166b/Breckenridge.jpg[/IMG]

Taken before the night's festivities got going....in the background to the right are Dick Jones and his wife (yellow T-6 on shirt), and behind the car the guy with the red beard/hair is 'Bear', the maintainer of the CAF P-40....some other familiar faces in there, too...of course in the foreground are myself, Denise and Doug....regular attendees for the last 5 years of the show...

Mark

[corsair166b]

Try that again...did'nt seem to work...

[corsair166b]

and ALL of these were taken at one time or another at the Breckenridge shows.....









Steve Rister is in the back of the T-6 in the T-6/P-40 pic....the B-25 and Corsair pic were shot from Arnot's 'Silver Lady'....Makanna used the B-25 shots he got of 'Ol Grey Mare' on the cover of his book and a banking shot of the Corsair inside the book....Denise shot the one of Connie Edwards' Albatross over Hubbard Reservoir from Ray Kinney's T-6 with Ted Foran chasing if memory serves (or was it Marty Case?)..

anyway....great days....

[Lynn Allen]

Try that again...did'nt seem to work...

Mark were you there when a certain P-51 came in low from the East to West for the Saturday PM party? That was a true Texas low pass

Lynn

[Obergrafeter]

The pass of all passes! Shame no one got video, but that was the days before everyone carried one. Jim got a picture when he was still a quarter mile out, but that doesn't tell what happened a half second later!

[Brad]

I wonder how many people know Bill was a real B-25 pilot. One year we were chatting at the show at Ellington, and Bill told me on the morning Pearl Harbor was attacked he was a cadet at Ellington. The next day he left for training and went on to fly Mitchells. I heard he'd like to get Silver Lady, back. Who, beside Nelson, is the slim young guy in the window with dark hair? For airplanes and flying, Bkd was about the best show there was. I met Tex Hill there, and he told me about his first Zero encounter where they got his wingman and almost left his P-40 as two P-20s. There's plenty of shows with acro and diesel burners, we need to get some more like Bkd. Tip of navigation, if you can't gat real Bar-B-Q, you're too far north!

Not only was Mr. Arnot a real B-25 pilot, but he also flew B-24s and B-29 in the CBI. Best I can remember, he has about three Distinguished Flying Crosses and was shot down once in a B-24 He was also one of the "Flying Sergeants". Seems like he told me he did some flying for Douglas after the war and flew A-20s and A-26s a lot.

The young guy sitting in the window cleaning bugs off is a much younger version of me. The guy sitting in the copilot seat in the other pictures is Bud Arnot, one of the sons and an equally nice guy. In one of the Pictures Mr. Arnot and Bud are standing under the wing with another grey headed fellow. His name was Barney and he was an old family friend that flew as copilot on many occasions.

Jerry Janes and his crew flew his B-25 to Hawaii, Christmas Island and a few other Pacific locations many years ago. At Breckenridge or Harlingen one year later, , he was telling the story about how they did it. He didn't know Mr. Arnot very well and later asked him "Bill, aren't you impressed with my story of flying my B-25 all over the pacific?" Mr. Arnot said, "Well Jerry, not so much. I've done it when we ferried them during the war. But I was the only one in the airplane." Jerry told me he had a big helping of humble pie that evening.

[Lynn Allen]

The pass of all passes! Shame no one got video, but that was the days before everyone carried one. Jim got a picture when he was still a quarter mile out, but that doesn't tell what happened a half second later!

How about the photo that Jim took when it was over the taxi inbound! Right about where the B-25 was always parked

Lynn