Posted on 07/13/2021 5:28:51 PM PDT by Thank You Rush
Sally Connors had been working at the Carlsbad Airport for three years and even though she was only fourteen years old, she knew more about flying than pilots much older than herself. She had been taking flight training lessons since she was thirteen and planned on flying solo when she turned sixteen and getting her pilot’s license when she became eligible on her seventeenth birthday. Sally first saw an airplane up close on her fifth birthday at the San Diego Airport and has consumed by anything aeronautical ever since. She read everything she could find about female pilots which included; Amelia Earhart, Harriet Quimbey, Pancho Barnes, Bessie Coleman, Amy Johnson, Jacqueline Cochran and Willa Brown among others.
(Excerpt) Read more at thevistapress.com ...
Very nice. Thanks for posting. 😄
Thank you for posting this! There is so much awful news these days that it’s just a wonderful relief to read this.
Very good—it doesn’t get more American than that.
Great stuff. I know a pilot who will want to read this.
Note the SR-71 was not a fighter jet as stated in the story.
The local airport I can watch from my deck and they have a P-51 there and when it takes off, it goes. Amazing plane and story. Thanks for sharing.
Great story, my only quibble is an SR-71 is neither a stealth aircraft nor a fighter.
Geez, where do you find a woman like that anymore? Skydancer?
Great story, thanks.
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It’s a great story, but commenters to the linked article point out that it is fiction.
Thank you very much for posting it here.
Oh man, I read that out loud over the phone to my girlfriend and had to stop a couple of times to get a hold of my emotions.
What a fantastic, positive story.
Thanks for posting it.
I’m not an aviation buff, but I LOVED Jimmy Stewart!
My God, what a story. If you want to hear something that’ll cause your eyes to well up, look up his guest spot on The Tonight Show from about forty years ago; the one where he read a poem he wrote about his dog, Beau. I was blubbering like a baby by the time he got done; I think the only time I ever cried harder in my life was on the day my father passed away. I wish I’d have gone into the Air Force and not the Army like I originally intended - it would have been an honor serving under him.
most all of the actors from back then that were WWII veterans were quality. Some that served even surprised me like Paul Newman.
“She read everything she could find about female pilots which included; Amelia Earhart, Harriet Quimbey, Pancho Barnes, Bessie Coleman, Amy Johnson, Jacqueline Cochran and Willa Brown among others.”
I wonder if one of those “among others” was Beryl Markham.
For example: I searched General Richard Drury the Wing Commander when I was stationed overseas and he pops right up on the Air Force website.
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107214/brigadier-general-richard-t-drury/
I also looked at the list of all who flew the SR-71 and there is no Sally Connors.
Listing of All Personnel Who Flew the Blackbirds
Then I looked for the list of female Thunderbird pilots and found that have been five but none of the five was named Sally Connors.
Then I searched to see if Jimmy Stewart ever own a P-51 Mustang named Mustang Sally and the answer is no. It appears that he was a part owner of a P-51/C named Thunderbird.
Having lost her first two Mustangs in tragic accidents, on 19 December 1949 Jackie Cochran bought another P-51 Mustang racer—the 1949 Bendix Trophy Race winner, Thunderbird—from the Academy Award-winning actor and World War II B-24 wing commander, James M. Stewart. The earliest document in Thunderbird‘s Civil Aviation Administration file, Form ACA 132, contains the hand-written notation, “no service no.” The document states, “THIS AIRCRAFT WAS ASSEMBLED FROM COMPONENTS OF OTHER AIRCRAFT OF THE SAME TYPE.” The aircraft is designated on the form as a North American P-51C, Serial No. 2925.
This includes the history of that aircraft.
https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/jimmy-stewart/
Three years later Jackie Cochran sold it back to Jimmy Stewart and then a few years later he sold it to the previous co-owner, Joe De Bona. The aircraft changed hands sever times after and the most recent owner intended to restore it. None of the documented owns was Sally Connors.
Then I happened to read comments on the posted story:MILO says:
MAY 3, 2020 AT 6:54 AM
There have only been 5 female Thunderbird pilots. The mythical Sally Connor was not one of them.Reply
SEAN F says:
MAY 11, 2021 AT 4:26 AM
Not to mention, the SR71 was retired in 1998 so it would have been tricky for her to fly it “later in her career”. Fiction is fine, I enjoy reading it, but it should be labeled as such for the more gullible.
And totally made up without it being labeled as fiction. It bugs me that some will think that it is fact.
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