His story is a amazing one. As a test pilot at Edwards AFB, George had been tasked with testing why there had been so many accidents in USAF Phantoms, often very close to the base itself. Turned out how the USAF had been loading Phantoms initially was bringing the CofG too far aft, both making it a lousy bomber and very dangerous at low speed, causing these departures from controlled flight. For his efforts, he was then tasked with spreading the work and flown (as a captain at the time) to USAF bases all around USA, Europe and even to the USAF base in Libya at the time in his own Sabreliner. Following this, he got the extraordinary posting to SPAD's. I wonder if senior USAF leadership didn't like the message he was putting out! His story then goes onto his training on SPAD's and posting to Thailand. The role as "Sandy" combat search and rescue would have had to have been one of the most dangerous flying jobs ever. This was certainly reflected in very high fatalities and shoot downs in this role and the high level of bravery awards given to these amazing aviators. I can't recommend George Marrett's book highly enough.
One more interesting story from Marrett's book is the time during his training on SPAD's when he saw a refuelling truck pull up to his aeroplane and a Airman undo the cap to the oil tank and proceed to insert a hose. Marrett then yells at the poor airman telling him not to put fuel in the oil tank. Airman replies - "Sir, this is oil". Marrett had never seen a refuelling truck used to fill up oil on a aeroplane before! The SPAD had a 37 gall oil tank, which it's R-3350 engine spewed out at a max acceptable rate of 6 gall's/hour! SPAD's got so slippery from all this oil, it was common to see both pilot's and maintenance personnel slipping off them - particularly after rain.
The model itself is a doddle to build being Tamiya. I did "bling" it up with the addition of some Eduard etch to the wheel bays and scratch built the "Yankee Extraction System" - a rocket assisted system to remove the pilot from the cockpit (when desired). I scratch built the White Phosphorus bombs as well (the little grey ones) and the 150 Gall drop tank. This model does go down as one of my all time fav builds. If I was ever to be lucky enough to own a warbird, I would dearly love a SPAD!
, and I don't wanna get banned from this site 