- 4 months ago
Climb into the cockpits of historic planes, and meet the craftsmen who dedicate their time to bring these aviation icons back to life.
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00:00Well, these probably are the two most important stearmen in my life because this is the first one I ever flew in all those years ago, and the one behind me is the first one I ever rebuilt.
00:14For the entire century since man first took to the air, the armies and the air forces of the world have exploited the space above them to take their military ambitions into a new dimension.
00:26However, when the guns have fallen silent, the engineering and craftsmanship, the skills and knowledge poured into developing these incredible fighting aircraft are frequently cast aside and lost to history.
00:39But now we can take you behind locked hangar doors into the secretive world of both the dedicated enthusiasts and big budget professionals who are spending millions of pounds and thousands of man-hours bringing them back to life.
00:54We'll follow six forgotten aircraft from rusting wrecks to living breathing memorials to those who fought and died for their country.
01:02These immaculate rebuilds are often against all odds in an impenetrable world of rare finds, intrigue and ingenuity.
01:11The research and return to flight of these important aircraft mean these are far from just restorations.
01:18These are plane resurrections.
01:21In hangars hidden away in rural England, just a stone's throw from one of the largest Second World War USA AF bases, there's a tiny band of professionals who have spent 30 years restoring a string of quintessentially American biplanes to flying condition.
01:46Well, my background was, as a kid I was an avid aeroplane spotter and photographer.
01:53So photography was sort of beginning to eat into my life and I became a professional photographer and ended up flying in all kinds of different sorts of aeroplanes as we do, flying around the world and whatever.
02:05And I went to an air show in Florida in 1900 and frozen to death and two of these taxied by with two long haired hippies flying them, no helmets, in the heat of the Florida sunshine, looked gorgeous and I thought, what are they?
02:19Months later when I got home, a guy started rebuilding these in a nearby airfield at Old Buckingham and I thought, well, I must go and have a look and take some pictures.
02:28Next thing, I was off and I've rioted it.
02:31Well, smitten, I was.
02:34And it's just an unbelievable experience with your head in the clouds and flying around in this noisy old radial engine, but beautiful.
02:42And at some point I thought, well, I'd really like to own one of those, but it's an impossibility.
02:47They're hugely expensive, or seem to be at the time, and they still are.
02:52But later, the same guy offered me a project, one of these, which was just a pile of bits of broken aeroplane and whatever.
03:00And I thought, well, I've been rebuilding motorcars, it can't be that much different, can it?
03:05So I ended up buying this project, which took me about a year to just go through the nuts and bolts and brackets and whatever,
03:13to see whether I got all the parts available, going through pages of maintenance manuals and parts books and all that kind of stuff.
03:22And eventually we, well, yeah, I thought, well, I think it's a go.
03:26And I got a wing kit from America, which was all the wood you could need to build the wings.
03:30All the ribs are made, the spars are made, and I needed someone to glue that together.
03:35Happened to have come across a guy that flies from this airfield who was a wood specialist for aeroplanes.
03:41So I just threw the whole lot at him and said, build me the wings, which he did.
03:45And then, of course, fabricing, you've got to do all that, never done any of that before.
03:49So you've got miles and miles of fabric and glue and dopes and all this kind of stuff.
03:54And eventually it sort of started to come together.
03:57So Paul had achieved his dream.
03:59Little did he know, events now would shape his whole life ahead.
04:04The P.T. Stearman, primary trainer, was a rugged biplane.
04:10Wooden wings, tubular steel fuselage, covered with fabric rather like its predecessors of World War I.
04:18It harks back in its own way to the early days of aviation.
04:22Flying at that time was only three decades or so old.
04:27The Wright brothers had first flown in 1903 and very quickly they identified the need to train pilots.
04:34So the Wright brothers founded the first flying school.
04:37One in America, then one in France later on.
04:40Elsewhere around the world, other pioneer aviators were realizing the same thing that you needed to train airmen.
04:48That led to trainer aircraft.
04:52And in the legacy of trainer aircraft, this one has to stand out as one of the key machines.
05:00Because it trained thousands of pilots.
05:05It's a big, robust biplane.
05:10Able to take the sort of punishment that the Tyro aviator would give the things.
05:16He made yet another attempt to try and land.
05:20They built something over 8,000 of them.
05:25More if you count the number of spare parts that were produced that could make up additional aircraft.
05:31And they served in many countries.
05:34They served with the Americans.
05:36They served elsewhere during World War II.
05:39But it was in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Air Force or Army Air Corps in the earlier days,
05:46that the Steelman really became the stuff of legends.
05:58These aeroplanes flew millions of hours in America,
06:02training our guys to fly the Second World War fighters, bombers, whatever kind of aeroplanes.
06:08Both for the Navy, both for the American Air Force, both for the British air, for the RAF.
06:14RAF guys used to go to the States and train on these things.
06:18So they've got a history offshore more than in the U.K.
06:22Because there were none here during the Second World War.
06:24But the guys that flew here in the Second World War had probably all flown stearmen.
06:29Well, before America entered the war, discussions had taken place with the British.
06:34And the British were invited to set up training airfields in America.
06:40Run by American civilian companies.
06:43One of the great advantages out there was the sheer size of America.
06:47Its vast spaces allowed aerodromes to be established,
06:52where pilots could learn and train with wide open areas.
06:58More space to crash in, some might have said.
07:00But at least they would fly in peace.
07:04You didn't have the risk of intruding aircraft shooting you down
07:08as you learned to stumble about the heavens.
07:11Over there, California, the Midwestern states, plenty of good weather.
07:18Not like England.
07:20And the American people welcomed the young cadets from Great Britain.
07:25They took them to their hearts very much indeed.
07:27And memories became fond between the two countries.
07:31It helped set the situation for the future as RAF Airmen trained over there.
07:46Most of the stearmen produced for the training role were painted blue and yellow.
07:50Bright colours so they could be seen in the air.
07:52Because training fields in America might have had 50 or 60 aeroplanes in the air at a time.
07:57So they wanted to be very visible.
07:59But towards the end of the war, they were cracking up so many of these stearmans in training.
08:04Maybe up to 10 were wrecked a day on some of these training fields.
08:07That it became a nightmare for them to keep the blue and yellow paint jobs going.
08:13Because they'd replace a wing off a bent aeroplane.
08:15And it would come back dote silver, as all aeroplanes have to be painted with silver dote.
08:20So what happened was you ended up with aeroplanes flying around with yellow wings,
08:25rudder maybe silver, and it was beginning to get a bit of a mess.
08:28So it was decided towards the end, leave them silver, paint them silver.
08:36One of the unsung and yet highly unlikely technical heroes of the training process was the link trainer.
08:43Looking more like a fairground ride than an aircraft,
08:47this air powered contraption gave a surprisingly accurate ground based simulation for the novice pilot.
08:54And was so successful, it entered use worldwide.
08:57Training thousands of potential pilots.
09:00Including those destined for combat with the US and British air forces.
09:05The link trainer explains how the controls are operated.
09:09And what effect their movements have upon a plane in the air.
09:12In the link trainer, preliminary instruction in instrument flying is given.
09:17The student practices straight and level flying.
09:20Normal turns, climbing and gliding turns, stalls and spins, and flying a course on the radio beam.
09:27What got me interested in aeroplanes is when I was at school we had three or four link trainers,
09:33rather like the one behind.
09:36They were great fun because, you know, for a kid you moved it and it rocked and rolled and everything like that.
09:42They're quite realistic.
09:43The great joy about it, as opposed to one of these modern simulators,
09:48is that when you pull the stick back, the aeroplane moved.
09:52And when you kicked the rudder, it spanned.
09:55And not only that, if it was connected to a proper console,
09:58you could take off from a particular place and you could fly,
10:03and the console would draw a line on a map where you'd been.
10:09And when you'd finished, the teacher would give you this and say,
10:13well done Gibbons, you've done this, that and the other.
10:15When I was at school, I was at Cheltenham College, I got a flying scholarship,
10:19and I went down to a place called Thruxton,
10:22and that's where I first flew the Tiger Moth DH-82A, which was rather fun.
10:27And then I did my national service, and as I was still interested in aeroplanes,
10:33and I was reasonably bright then, they got me to go to Canada,
10:38where I was learning to fly, and I was sent out to the province of Alberta,
10:43where I learnt on piston schools, which is where I learnt to fly on a thing called a Harvard.
10:50And then when I passed out of that, I then went to Manitoba,
10:54which is one of the middle states.
10:56And there, a place called Portage to the Prairie, I was put on jet school,
11:01flying an aeroplane called a T-33, or a Silver Star, which is based on the F-80 fighter.
11:08I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, you know, it was really superb.
11:13And then after that I came back, and while I was at university, I was in the Auxiliary Air Force.
11:19I did physics at Cambridge University, that's why I'm such a boring old fart.
11:25And then after all that, you know, I left the Air Force in 1916, went out to the Far East.
11:34And there I worked for about 25 years.
11:38A decade before James first took to the controls, RAF pilots were also finding their wings,
11:44thanks to the Tiger Moth, as they prepared to meet the Axis powers in the air.
11:49The Moth was a great flying start and easy to control, but the leap to faster and heavier aircraft wasn't easy.
11:58The Stearman, whilst also a biplane, was far larger, heavier and altogether more robust than its English counterpart,
12:06and softened the leap to the less forgiving monoplane fast trainers like the Harvard.
12:11It was said of the Stearman that there was nothing really that the Stearman couldn't teach the novice pilot.
12:24And that was exactly what it was designed to do.
12:27To become a pilot, you have the enthusiasm, and of course they did, but you needed then to pass a medical.
12:34During the Second World War, the Allies designed various tests and procedures that you would have to undertake
12:42before you would become an aviation cadet and would go to one of the many flying schools
12:49where you would find something called the barony chair.
12:53They'd put you in the chair and spin you around and then stop it suddenly,
12:56and you'd have to get up and they would see how coordinated or otherwise you might be.
13:02That was important, along with a whole series of other tests that they devised.
13:08After you'd volunteered to fly, you needed to be taken through the military procedures,
13:14and that fundamentally would be, after your tests and examinations, away you would go to boot school,
13:20where you would learn to march in the military manner.
13:25You would have to learn radio, aircraft recognition, mathematics, some of the sciences,
13:31a bit about the engines, navigation, all the fundamental stuff, as well as the military,
13:37weeks and weeks before you were allowed to climb into the cockpit of one of your nation's most valuable training aircraft.
13:46When I finally finished my steer, that year, there was the Popular Flying Association,
13:54had their 50th anniversary flying at Cranfield, and something like a thousand airplanes turns up over the weekend.
14:01Having put a ticket on it for judging, I thought, well, built an aeroplane is never going to get anywhere.
14:08I was surprised to learn that I'd actually won something.
14:12And I hadn't won any of the normal category of ticket, but because it was the 50th anniversary of a PFA rally,
14:19they awarded a special prize for that year, and I had won the gong for the best professionally rebuilt classic aeroplane.
14:30Now, I was gobsmacked, as you can imagine, but there we go.
14:36After that, of course, anybody with a steer in the country used to come to me and say,
14:40where do I get this, how do I fix that, and I'm going, my goodness, and it developed, and developed,
14:46and we came across another old airframe, and we rebuilt that one, and we became kind of well-known for that.
14:52So anybody within the UK, and even in Europe, used to come over and sort of say,
14:58can you fix this one, or have you got another one, can you find me one, and all this kind of stuff.
15:03So it sort of ballooned from there.
15:05So we kind of figure that we're one of the more well-known steerman restorers in this part of the world.
15:13And over the years, we've accumulated lots and lots of spare bits and parts, airworthy or not.
15:19But at the end of the day, we still end up with this huge store of parts,
15:24and it seemed an awful waste of just sort of leaving languishing there,
15:28and there were not bits you could use in active aeroplanes.
15:32So what we've done is we've presented Flixton Air Museum in Norfolk,
15:36with a huge amount of air to steer and parts, and said,
15:40get on with it, build yourself a replica.
15:42It's taken a long time.
15:44We still have bits missing, which we hope to come across to give to them,
15:49so they can finish it off.
15:51But I think it's going to get to being, looking quite like a respectable steerman,
15:56although never will be airworthy.
16:06Flixton, Norfolk.
16:08For a while in World War II, the home of the 93rd Bomb Group,
16:12and later a naval base despite being 15 miles from the coast.
16:16Now the home to a dedicated band of volunteers keeping a packed museum running,
16:22honouring pilots and crew from the birth of flight through to the Cold War.
16:27Their challenge now is the biggest they've ever faced.
16:31Not just preserving a donated aircraft, but building their steerman from scratch to pristine,
16:37and to the casual observer, flight-ready condition.
16:41There's no shortage of skilled help, but despite this, it's a massive job,
16:46and they're facing all the same challenges as any builder of fabric-covered airframes.
16:51They would have put dope on the fabric, which we haven't done,
16:56because the fabric is just taut by a heat gun,
17:01and we're hoping that that's going to work well.
17:06It's worked on the fuselage and the other parts,
17:09and it seems to produce a good result,
17:12but a lot easier than applying dope.
17:15Well, it's standard RAF trainer yellow.
17:18I mean, that was the thing they did,
17:20and it's obvious that you can see it well.
17:25And in the case of the steerman, I think they had another name,
17:30which was the yellow peril, because of some of its hand-in characteristics.
17:35But yellow is a standard RAF trainer colour.
17:41Having said that, of course, the new Hawks are black.
17:46But mostly they were yellow in these days.
17:50While I was talking to some old boys in the States
17:52who worked on training airfields,
17:55one said to me,
17:56it was not unusual to have ten steerman a day wrecked,
17:59and you think, my goodness.
18:01But, of course, they had masses of spare parts.
18:03They were very simple airframes.
18:05If you bent a wing, you'd take it off and put another one on
18:08and wrap it all up and be back on the line the next morning.
18:11Putting the fabric on normally takes a bit of time,
18:15but if you were operating in the second world war training,
18:19training airfields,
18:21they would probably have spare wings ready to swap
18:24while somebody repaired the old one.
18:26So the turnaround from these silly little accidents
18:30that many people had was probably quite rapid.
18:34As far as the fabric goes these days,
18:36I mean, in the past it was linen or cotton,
18:39and we now use a man-made fibre,
18:42and we use a fabric called seaconite,
18:45where once you've glued it down,
18:48you then shrink it with an iron,
18:50so you get that nice tension into it,
18:52and then we dope over the top of that,
18:54which gives it a little bit more bing to it.
18:56When you knit it with your finger,
18:58you get this nice ringing sound.
19:00Historically, with the cotton or linen,
19:02which cotton in America is probably the most common,
19:06you had to put a dope on it,
19:08which, as the dope dries,
19:10it shrinks and stretches the fabric,
19:12and that is quite time consuming.
19:15But I guess, in the war,
19:16they had big brushes and massive dope
19:19and whacked it on at a phenomenal rate.
19:22The fabric covering the aircraft
19:23wasn't the only Stearman feature
19:25that harked back to the beginnings of flight.
19:27The aircraft has traditional open cockpits,
19:30exposed to the wind and the weather,
19:33as well-known Warbird owner Morris Hammond found out
19:36when he acquired his ex-US Navy example.
19:39It was on a, I think it was 1st of March,
19:42there was frost in the corners of the field,
19:45OAT was about sort of plus two,
19:48and I'd never flown Stearman before,
19:51so a good friend of mine came with me,
19:54and we flew down in a nice and warm arrow
19:56and got out of the cockpit,
19:58and my friend, who was going to actually fly the aeroplane,
20:02I was going to navigate and sit in the front seat.
20:05I'd got like ski trousers, ski masks,
20:09three coats, gloves, mittens,
20:12and I'd got my A2 jacket, flying suit,
20:16and boned up with me.
20:18And he said,
20:19you haven't flown much open cockpit really, have you?
20:22I said, well, no, not really.
20:24He said, yeah, I'm a bit worried about that,
20:25but we'll see how we go.
20:27And really from Lans End to Compton Abbas was really,
20:32the chill was unbelievable really.
20:35I don't think I've ever been so cold in all my life
20:37when we got out at Compton Abbas.
20:40So I felt as if my fingers would snap.
20:43So the line that I was putting on the chart,
20:45which I'd got in the front, only went halfway,
20:48and I'm sure the Chinagraph froze up.
20:50So that was an interesting flight back.
20:58Steermen being as big as they are after the war,
21:01when they didn't need fleets and fleets and fleets
21:04to train pilots for the conflict,
21:07Steermen became ideal aeroplanes to convert to crop dusting.
21:13They removed the small engine, which is only 220 horsepower
21:16on the standard aeroplane,
21:18put a 450 horsepower engine on the front of it,
21:21take the front seat out,
21:23put a huge hopper in there with 1,000 pounds of chemicals in it,
21:27replacing the 200-pound pilot.
21:29So they needed a bigger engine to get the aeroplane in the air.
21:32And they converted something like 4,500 steermen into crop dusters.
21:38Well, of course, it's an ancient aeroplane
21:41and technology takes over.
21:43They designed and built modern crop dusting aeroplanes,
21:47especially for the job.
21:48So the Steermen's ended up being sort of thrown in barns and left,
21:51and there's lots lying around in America.
21:53They are, even to this day,
21:55Steermen stuffed in barns,
21:57which people have never done anything with.
22:00But as of the late 60s,
22:03all these historic aeroplanes,
22:05people were beginning to think,
22:06well, there's some value in them.
22:07It's a bit like classic cars in a way.
22:09And these old crop dusters are being dragged out of warehouses
22:13and workshops and barns all over the place,
22:17and people were storing them back to what they once were.
22:20And this is where this one comes in.
22:22You know, this was a crop duster.
22:24And it was also my demise in this thing
22:26because this is the very first Steermen I ever flew in.
22:29So the beginning of all my problems
22:32is standing behind me all these years later.
22:35In the post-war years,
22:37the demand for farm produce rocketed in the USA
22:40as rationing came to an end in Europe.
22:42So the crop duster came into its own,
22:45delivering its load of fertiliser or insecticide
22:48across acres at a single pass.
22:50The availability of cheap, reliable aircraft
22:53and the pilots trained to fly them
22:56meant that aerial top dressing became a booming industry.
23:00This might have been good for the farmers,
23:03but it took a fearsome toll on the pilots.
23:06The requirement to fly low
23:08and to get the job done as quickly as possible
23:11meant that accidents inevitably happened.
23:14They could be found doing what would now be seen as madness,
23:18flying beneath power cables,
23:20through openings in wooded land
23:22and within inches of the crops they targeted
23:25with little or no direct forward vision.
23:28Many, having survived one, perhaps two world wars,
23:32died in fiery crashes alongside the very fields
23:36that provided their livelihood.
23:38Unsung heroes of post-war aviation.
23:42The most incredible reaction we've ever had here
23:45was one guy that I used to go to school with
23:47who went to the States as a young lad
23:50and learned to fly
23:51and ended up running one of the biggest
23:52crop dusting companies in America.
23:55He returned to see his family,
23:57wandered in here because he knew we got stearman,
23:59saw that on the wall and said,
24:01my God, that's my best mate.
24:03I rang him two days before I left from America.
24:06So he was quite surprised to find that
24:08his buddy's aeroplane had sort of drifted across the Atlantic
24:12and landed in our workshop.
24:14I think the appeal of a stearman is global.
24:18And since the crop dusting days are over
24:21and they've been restoring them in America
24:23and people have been visiting from the UK
24:25have fallen in love for seeing these things
24:28at air shows or wherever.
24:30And, of course, it was nice to think,
24:33well, I'd like one of those and import one.
24:36And that's been going on.
24:38And now they're imported all, well,
24:40they're all over the world now
24:42and Europe has got masses of them.
24:44But they're such an iconic aeroplane
24:46and so simple to fly
24:48and kind of, in my eyes, quite beautiful.
24:51Well, if you want a bit of romance in flying,
24:54it's nice to have something like a stearman,
24:56historic, affordable in most cases
24:59because they don't like other war birds.
25:02If you're going to buy a Mustang or something,
25:04you've got to think about a gallon a minute of fuel.
25:06These will burn 10 gallons an hour
25:08and you can have a hell of a lot of fun.
25:10They're fully aerobatic if you like that kind of thing
25:14and just great touring aeroplanes as well.
25:17Paul's war bird-owning colleague, Maurice Hammond,
25:21added a stearman to his American collection
25:23to make a set.
25:25The multi-million pound 400 mph Mustang fighter,
25:29the big, bold Harvard intermediate trainer
25:32and the altogether more modest
25:34Stearman Cadet entry-level biplane,
25:37on which the pilots of the bigger birds
25:39would have literally earned their wings.
25:41So, Maurice knows the mechanics of the biplane very well.
25:45Yeah, the crop dusters,
25:47everybody put 450 Pratt & Whitney's in them
25:50to lift the weight and to have the power
25:53to do the crop spraying.
25:55It's virtually just a scaled-down version
25:58of the Harvard engine, which is the Wasp.
26:01Yeah, it's two and a half hours to empty on fuel.
26:05It uses about a gallon of oil an hour
26:08and a radial engine.
26:10And, yeah, it's just great.
26:12It's twice the amount of horsepower
26:14the aeroplane was designed to have initially.
26:17So, it doesn't go any faster.
26:19It just gives up a lot of lift.
26:20But, yeah, they are heavy.
26:22The nose is shortened to make the gravity come right.
26:29So, yeah, it's just a heavy aeroplane.
26:32The one I have went to Singapore in 1956
26:36and the engine was installed
26:38and the airframe's never been cut.
26:40So, we are confident that it never became a duster.
26:45There's nothing in the airframe to indicate.
26:47Normally, to put the hopper in,
26:50you have to remove the front seat
26:52and, therefore, you have to cut the airframe
26:54but the airframe's just completely standard.
26:57Most people, when they build an aeroplane for the first time,
27:08build something kind of small or sort of whatever,
27:11you know, buy yourself a kit or something.
27:13This was a bit beyond that
27:15and you need quite a lot of space.
27:16Well, as it happened, when I started to rebuild this,
27:19I'd built an extension on the house,
27:21which never quite got finished
27:22and I thought that would make a wonderful workshop
27:24to rebuild the aeroplane in.
27:27Not the fuselage, but when I was rebuilding the wings,
27:29I had all the wings in there,
27:31I did all the doping, stitching, fabric work and spraying.
27:34If anybody lifts the carpet,
27:35you'll see all this silver dope on the floor
27:37where I locked over the cans of paint
27:39but it lent itself because it was centrally heated.
27:43Wonderful.
27:45Back at Flixton Air Museum,
27:47the volunteers are making slow but good progress
27:49on the assembly of their steerman example.
27:52Originally, the aircraft were assembled back-to-back
27:55on a massive production line.
27:58But despite substantial amounts of metal work in the fuselage,
28:01the work was still carried out by human welders
28:04long before the advent of computer-controlled construction.
28:08For that reason, each example of the aircraft
28:11can have a degree of difference or tolerance in its fit.
28:16The team at Flixton find this to be very much the case
28:19when it comes to assembling the tie wires
28:22that add strength to the wing assemblies.
28:25There are four of these assemblies on each side,
28:28port and starboard.
28:30Despite the name wires, these are in fact long extruded strips
28:34of stainless steel profiled to reduce drag
28:37and threaded in opposing directions at each end.
28:40Thus, when, as the museum restore is found,
28:44the wires are a little on the long side,
28:46it's not a simple matter of snipping off the excess.
28:49The strips have to be ground down,
28:52reprofiled and deburred to fit the original brackets
28:56before the wing assembly can be made taut.
28:59It's not an easy job.
29:01The wires are specially hardened to preserve their life on the aircraft
29:06and to resist the very process that the team are attempting.
29:10Without the guy wires, the wings will be flimsy and sag at the very least.
29:15Plus, the volunteers are determined that whilst never destined to fly,
29:20their stearman will be built to the same exacting production standards
29:24as the original wherever possible.
29:27Finally, the task is completed
29:30and the wires are offered up to fit the wing assembly.
29:33It's taken hours of work for the team
29:36and has brought with it a realisation of the problems
29:39faced by the engineers in the field all those years ago.
29:43Putting a steam together needs a bit of manpower
29:54and you need lots of people to be bouncing here and there
29:57on various sort of stepladders and whatever
30:00to get their wings all the way up there and support them.
30:03It's kind of a learning curve
30:05but we got better at it as the years went by.
30:08It always seems to be that when you've put one of these together
30:10and you do your first test flight
30:12there's little tweaks you have to do here and there.
30:15The cables that hold the wings
30:17and put all the tension into the whole airframe.
30:19The tweaking this way and that way
30:21or else it might fly wing down, wing up a little bit.
30:24But you spend a couple of weeks
30:27sort of working all the finesses in and out of it, you know?
30:40Post-war, a lot of steermans found their way into other nations.
30:55Some 20 plus countries used adaptations of the steermen.
30:59Some of them used them for military purposes,
31:02apparently occasionally in the counterinsurgency role
31:05or fighting rebels or indeed being the rebels fighting the government.
31:10The steermen, because of it was a rugged machine
31:14and easy to fly, could be adapted to a whole manner of tasks and duties
31:19and many of them were.
31:24A lot of steermans, because of their kind of simple things to fly and maintain,
31:29were used by Central and South American countries in fairly large numbers.
31:34Mexico may even have some flying at the moment.
31:38The Canadians had about 300 steermans delivered
31:41through a military aid package
31:44and that was to train RF pilots in Canada
31:48because they weren't allowed to be trained in America.
31:50But things changed a little later on
31:53and Canadians found that the steermen
31:56was pretty well useless in Canada
31:59because Canada being such a cold country,
32:01open cockpit aeroplanes, the pilots and crew froze to death.
32:05So a few Canadian steermans were fitted with a canopy
32:09which was hopefully going to cure the problem
32:12of the crew freezing to death,
32:14but ultimately that didn't really work
32:16so they were then sent back to America
32:19and did flying training there.
32:21Yeah, when the steermen, when they were in foreign air force use
32:26in South America and Central America quite a lot,
32:29several of those airframes probably still kick about,
32:33but what happened post war was that South America
32:36was one of the big areas that the crop dusting steermen was used in.
32:39And it happens that one of the guys in Norfolk
32:42who was training in America in the Second World War
32:46found languishing in El Salvador as a crop duster
32:50a steermen which he actually flew while he was training.
32:53So he brought that back to the UK
32:55and was very proud to say,
32:56I flew this in the war daddy.
32:58It was quite amazing that he could find the actual aeroplane he flew in.
33:03He is now living in Luxembourg.
33:06The wings of the Flixton Steermen are finally in place
33:15after much modification of the bracing wires.
33:18Now the attention of the museum restorers turned to the tail.
33:22A simple assembly, but notoriously difficult to get assembled
33:26and bolted to the fuselage without many hands to help.
33:30The museum has completed the fabric covering
33:32and painted it in the Canadian issue RAF all yellow colour scheme.
33:37This represents the finish that RAF trainees would have expected to see
33:41on their aircraft in the training camps of the British Commonwealth during the war.
33:46On many simple aircraft, the horizontal tail surfaces are bolted on in turn,
33:51but on the steermen they have a pair of tie bars between them
33:55which, whilst adding strength to the overall structure,
33:58mean that the entire assembly has to be handled as a single piece
34:02which isn't proving too easy.
34:04New bolts are a tight fit,
34:06but with some realignment and a touch of persuasion
34:09they finally slip into place
34:11and are tightened to hold the basic structure.
34:14Whilst precision talking isn't needed,
34:16the display steermen must be safe and solid
34:19and now the nightmare of bracing rears its head again.
34:22There's a pair of flying wires beneath the horizontal stabiliser assembly
34:26that will need to be in place before the control surfaces will support themselves.
34:31This time, the steel strips are within tolerance though,
34:34the right length, and prove an easier task.
34:38It's a time-consuming job building this one-off example,
34:42but of course, that wasn't always the way.
34:49This factory is completing its 1,000th plane for the Army.
34:53The Stearman Aircraft Company of Wichita, Kansas
34:56is the first to reach the 1,000 mark in the number of warplanes
35:00delivered to the military forces.
35:06The defense program calls for busy construction,
35:09and that's what we see here.
35:11Mass production of planes.
35:13Major Harris of the United States Army congratulates company executive J.E. Schaefer
35:20and takes delivery of the 1,000th plane.
35:28Employees of the company are enthusiastic,
35:30and the takeoff with a cheer.
35:32There goes the first 1,000th plane delivered to the Army by any aircraft plant.
35:44Back in the modern day, the tail and rudder are ready to be lifted into place.
35:49There's no swarm of Stearman Company staff here, so it's just a two-man job.
35:55Despite their concerns, the museum volunteers find the tail section is a perfect fit,
36:00and can be wiggled into place with little trouble,
36:03and bolts are slotted in and hand-tightened.
36:07Though it will never fly,
36:09the team want their plane to have all the operational controls of an airplane example,
36:13so care is taken that all the surfaces pivot and move.
36:17The Finn wears the red, white and blue tail flash that was common to all RAF training aircraft of the period,
36:24not to be confused with the French national flag.
36:27Once again, tie wires are measured, adjusted,
36:31and then offered up to tension and strengthen the assembly at the rear of the aircraft.
36:36This time, there's less than half an inch of adjustment needed to get the wartime components in place.
36:43Even the fairings that cover the area ahead of the tail fin align without issues,
36:49their special Zeus fasteners locking into place without modification.
36:54It's this type of component that is the Achilles heel for the Stearman Restorers.
36:59Major items, wings, undercarriage, fuselage were expected to be damaged,
37:05and huge numbers of spares were created during the service life of the aircraft.
37:09However, the less vulnerable covers, panels and clips are uncommon as spares
37:15and becoming hard to source as originals and expensive to replicate.
37:20The control cables are adjusted to give proper movement limits,
37:24and then the final position is fixed with special lock nuts.
37:27There's a risk that the vintage rudder control horns may no longer be up to the job,
37:32but the cables are locked down for what will surely be their last time without an issue.
37:39Rudder movement is checked, just as it would be on the production line.
37:43Rudder control was crucial to trainees as they learnt to spin and recover their aircraft in combat.
37:49Attaching the Stearman's ailerons is something of a dark art,
37:53and it's crucial not to damage the fragile covering.
37:56Factory workers were skilled in the task,
37:59and Paul Bennett has passed on his special techniques for the job,
38:02especially for sliding the awkward securing pins into place.
38:06Now the surfaces, complete with authentic trim tabs,
38:10are secured to the rear empennage successfully,
38:13the pins snapping satisfyingly into place.
38:16Ironically, the aircraft, now forever enclosed within the safety of the museum,
38:22looks almost ready to take to the air.
38:35No, we've done a lot of Stearman,
38:37and I think we've probably all Stearmaned out now,
38:40but I'm getting on, and they take a long time to put together,
38:44and the problem now is that the spare parts are getting difficult to find in certain areas.
38:50You can get 90% of the aeroplane,
38:53but finding the other 10% is becoming very difficult.
38:56Also, parts are now getting very, very expensive,
38:59and it becomes a bit of a nonsense,
39:01because it's going to cost you more to rebuild it than it can end up being worth.
39:06You're doing it for the love of it more than anything,
39:08and to produce one of these and get it in the air and see somebody jump in it
39:12and smiling from ear to ear is almost enough in itself for building it.
39:19But again, you know, you've got to be sensible about these things,
39:23and I don't really want them to cost me money.
39:25Keeping these things flying probably won't be a problem once you've got a whole one,
39:30because if you have a problem with any part, it can be found.
39:34But if you want to start from scratch to rebuild one, you've got to find all the parts,
39:39and that becomes difficult.
39:41Once they're active, there's no problems with engines at the moment.
39:43I can see that these engines are going to be available forever and ever and ever.
39:48The airframe is tubes, fabric, the wings are wood, wood ribs, wood spars.
39:55You can make all that.
39:56The wood's available.
39:57It's got to be high quality.
39:58You've got to have people knowing what they're doing, putting it together.
40:01But I think these things can go on forever.
40:04The Flexton aeroplane is looking pretty good.
40:16I mean, from a critical eye, you can sort of, like us, you know that it would never be fair
40:22worthy, but it makes a very good representative aeroplane of a stearman.
40:27It's painted in what looks like RAF colours, because it was based on one which was used by
40:32the Canadian forces to train British pilots and were funded through the military aid package
40:38and was issued with RAF type serial numbers and had RAF roundels.
40:46We've helped where we can and popped over there and given them a bit of advice here and there,
40:50and they're continually coming to us and saying, have you got this bit?
40:53Have you got that bit?
40:54And in most cases, we have, but other than that, they've had to sort of be a little bit
40:59sort of free and easy with the assembly.
41:04I think the Flexton aeroplane, for nothing else, has given the guys something to think about
41:08because it's not a simple aeroplane to rig it up.
41:11They've got to have me come and hold your wings up in the middle of nowhere for ages
41:16and put wires in and hold it together.
41:19But I think, you know, in a way it's been a training aid for them as well.
41:22The Stearman construction is very simple, and it's very simple to put it together really.
41:28But, of course, like all aeroplanes, it has to be pretty exact here and there
41:32because you can't, you know, have one wing pointing one way and one the other
41:36and you could be in a nasty mess.
41:38But I think the guys at Flexton, because they don't intend to fly it,
41:42have got away with a little bit, but it looks good.
41:44I think they've done a pretty fine job of it.
41:51My Stearman was ordered in 1941, probably delivered in 1942,
41:56but they'd been making Stearman for a year or two before that.
42:00And the design goes kind of way back and it started off in the late 30s
42:05but ended up when the Army Air Corps ordered these
42:08that Boeing had brought out Stearman as a company.
42:11When Boeing produced the Stearman for the services,
42:14they made them in several different models
42:17and the biggest difference, mostly, was the engines.
42:20Some had Lycoming-made engines, these are Continental engines.
42:25There was another one called a Jacob.
42:27So they got different numbers for the airframes
42:30and this is an N2S-3, naval aeroplane N2S-3, that was the type.
42:37They had N2S-1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s, which is confusing.
42:43Then in the Army, they called them PT-27s.
42:46Well, a N2S-3 and a PT-27, identical aeroplane.
42:52But one was Navy, one was Army Air Force.
42:56Paul has had dozens of examples of the aircraft pass through his hands over the years
43:06and along with his restoration partner, Bob,
43:09they are now ready to test the most recent example.
43:12Well, this is the latest Stearman rebuilt.
43:15It's got all the paperwork signed, ready to roll.
43:18It's had an engine run or two.
43:20A test flight is always the most nerve-wracking thing you could ever experience.
43:25You've gone through every nut and bolt, every split pin,
43:29all the paperwork, engines, everything you could think of time and time again.
43:35Other people have checked your work, so it's doubly checked that the first flight to me always gives me butterflies.
43:43Restoring this aeroplane wasn't the most difficult one,
43:46because when we got it, it was a complete machine.
43:50What we had to do was refabric it, go through all the woodwork on the wings.
43:56It's a nice, bright, shiny, zero-timed engine.
44:00It's only done about five hours ground-run testing,
44:04but as good as the day they built it 70 years ago.
44:08When you finally hand an aeroplane over to its new owner,
44:11you sometimes feel a bit sort of sad because you've kind of sort of lost the baby, so to speak.
44:17Of course, there's a lot of excitement from the customer point of view
44:22when they're here and they see it being built for all the processes.
44:26And you feel kind of buoyed up by the fact that they're so excited about the thing being put together.
44:33And when we've test flown it and the new owner comes along and either he flies it
44:40or somebody he knows will fly it away from here,
44:43that gives me another nervous moment because how much time have they got on Stearmans
44:49or tail-dragger aeroplanes and it's their aeroplane so it's up to them what they do with it.
44:54But it's always worrying that the guy might not have enough experience.
44:57But so far, touch wood, we've never had any incidents.
45:06Paul hopes to keep his incident record clear as the doors roll open on a chilly morning.
45:12The aircraft was topped up and engine tested the previous day.
45:16So today, it's final pre-flights, handover to the ground crew and that nerve-tingling moment
45:23as the throttle is pushed forward to take a 70-year-old aircraft into the sky,
45:28just as it would have been on the first day that it rolled off the factory floor.
45:33It's a familiar scene to Paul and Bob, but for a new owner, it's a moment to treasure.
45:40Test pilot Mike goes through his checklist.
45:43Fuel, pressures, electrical, wind conditions, emergency procedures are all cross-checked
45:50before the familiar bark of the seven-cylinder engine cuts the air.
45:55Oh, I accidentally get up the air at night.
45:56I haven't slept with enough
46:52Well, that Steermann used to fly many, many years ago when I took my first flight in it, but sadly, shortly after that, it was grounded because it had a few problems, and the owner thought, well, it would be fun to take it all to pieces and rebuild it.
47:13So, 13 years on, sadly, he died with nothing happening to the aeroplane, so it became available for purchase, and we had somebody who was very interesting in having a Steermann, so he did the negotiations with the widow, and we restored it, and now it's as beautiful as it ever was, and it's wonderful to see it back in the air.
47:32It's a sort of gut-wrenching sort of thing when you see them in the air.
47:41After all the hard labor you've put into restoring these, what, 70-year-old aeroplanes, but to see these old aeroplanes flying is a wonderful, wonderful thing, and to think that you've actually built or rebuilt them, and we've rebuilt several now,
47:59and it's a joy every time they take to the sky, the owners and people around wonder at the noise of the engine and the sound of it and everything else, and they're just beautiful.
48:11I think of all the Steermann around, that we've ever worked on, rebuilt or whatever, the silver one behind me is the one that really sticks in my heart, because that's the first one.
48:32Of the original 10,000 built, more are coming back into service every year.
48:38The Steermann Cadet has already passed its 80th birthday, and who is to say this iconic type won't be regularly flying well into its centenary.
48:49Paul's achievements are remarkable in returning so many of these antique aeroplanes to the skies, and for that, Paul's become a legend in the Warbird community,
49:00because of the quality of his work and the reputation that he's gained in restoring aircraft like the Steermann.
49:07And it's to him, really, that we will now owe a great debt, as at air shows and wherever else, we watch the Steermann, up where they belong, flying.
49:19We'll see you next time.
49:24We'll see you.
49:31We'll see you next time.
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