A Plane Story from my Dad

I knew a little bit about the plane we kids called "The Red Baron" but I did not know all this. A huge thanks to my Dad for sharing this great story and for passing along the excellent video, and here they are:

"(The following) video was sent to me by a very close friend of mine, who is a fellow pilot, and a fellow doctor.

Long, long ago, Uncle Lano (my brother) and I bought an antique 1934 model Monocoupe airplane. The plane belonged to the widow of Rusty Herd. Rusty was a stunt pilot who flew another Monocoupe in airshows.


One day while Rusty was performing stunts in an airshow, he had a heart attack.  The plane went on flying. It made some dives all on its own and when the airspeed got fast enough the plane recovered from the dives all on its own and climbed out only to enter another dive, and another recovery.  As the plane dove near the ground, the spectators could see that Rusty was slumped over, and apparently unconscious. Many in the crowd thought Rusty was still in control of the plane, and merely faking being unconscious. However on the final dive, the plane did not recover and crashed directly into the ground.


Rusty had a backup Monocoupe in his hangar which was hated by his widow. She sold the plane to Lano and me for a measly $3000 bucks. Lano traveled to Florida and flew the plane back to OKC. When we got it home we realized it was one of only three remaining planes of its kind, so we had the plane completely rebuilt from the inside out. We had it painted Ford pickup red with black trim (16 coats of paint). An accomplished aircraft refurbisher named Tony Blackstone rebuilt and refinished the plane. It was the finest job he ever did, according to Tony.  I then flew the plane to the Oshkosh Antique World Championships, where the plane won First Place!


The plane went on to win first place in every airshow we entered it into. The plane was stressed for 9Gs, right side up or upside down. I flew it in loops, spins, chandells, falling leaves, you name it...the plane could do it.  It had a Warner 145 horse radial engine, and this model won the world air races in 1934 and 1935. I was born in Jan. 1934 so I was not able to pilot the air races. Probably because I did not have a pilot license yet.  We eventually sold the plane to another airplane nut named Don Love who lived in Kansas at the time.


The plane was delightful to fly, but a pure bitch to land because the big radial engine washed out the air controls on landing, and the heel brakes were essentially unavailable while you were danding on the rudders. We could have installed some Cessna tow brakes, but that would have ruined the originality of the aircraft making it in3eligible to win first place. Boy was it fun, though!


Jim Little


PS If you think you would enjoy flying, watch these beautiful old (renewed) aircraft fly by."





(If you have trouble viewing this here, you can click here to see the video at YouTube.)