Top Five Buzz Jobs that Landed Pilots in Hot Water”€¦or Not

The year was 1931, about midway between the World Wars. A promising young Royal Air Force fighter pilot, fresh from the recognition of flying at an RAF public flying display at Hendon Aerodrome outside of London, Douglas Bader (pronounced Bah-der) landed his Bristol Bulldog biplane fighter at a remote field. A group of other pilots did not seem so impressed with his accomplishments and let him know what they thought. Bader stomped back and climbed into his cockpit, took off, and proceeded to perform a very low pass over the runway.

But when he arrogantly initiated a slow roll, things went terribly wrong. While inverted, a wingtip caught the turf and the Bulldog quickly became a jumble of steel tube, fabric, and wire. Bader's legs were both crushed and were subsequently amputated. Naturally, his military flying career was over, right?

Wrong.

Years later, with Nazi Germany on the warpath, Bader talked his way back into the RAF, qualified as a fighter pilot, and went on to become Wing Leader during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and a national hero. Flying and fighting with two artificial legs, he also became a lifelong advocate for amputees around the world.

As an American Eagle Squadron pilot in the Royal Air Force before Pearl Harbor, and later as a U.S. Army Air Forces Mustang pilot with the Fourth Fighter Group, Don Gentile became a matinee idol for the press. With 19 air-to-air victories over Luftwaffe opponents, Gentile took off on a mission over Europe, knowing that a film crew would be waiting for his return.

His commanding officer, the legendary Colonel Don Blakeslee had a standing rule for his pilots. No showing off. "Anyone who prangs a kite swanning around is out of the group," was his rule.

That afternoon, Gentile returned to the Fourth's base in Debden, England, and made a very low pass over the runway. Too low. His P-51B, named Shangri-La, mushed on the pullout and skidded across the ground, coming to an ignominious stop with its prop blades curled aft and its back broken behind the cockpit.

Gentile was uninjured, until he had to face his CO, who "chewed him a new one," and -- as the legend goes -- sent him packing. Blakeslee later maintained that he didn't boot Gentile out and that he was due for leave back in the U.S. anyway.

But he never flew for the Fourth again.

One of the preeminent warbird pilots in the UK, Ray Hannah flew World War II fighters in countless air demonstrations and television and film sequences for decades. One of his most famous "performances" came during the filming of the BBC television mini-series, "Piece of Cake" based on the book by Derek Robinson. The series followed a fictional RAF squadron as they prepared for inevitable combat at the start of World War II.

One of the antics the pilots practiced was to! fly under a bridge. The span in question was tucked away from prying eyes in their practice area. And this was long before the days or surveillance cameras. The producers asked Hannah if he could recreate the sequence. The video is easily found on YouTube and, though it's been more than 30 years since Hannah flew it, the footage puts the best of CGI to shame.

For a bonus look at Hannah's flying, search ’Spitfire Low Pass' and watch him fly a sequence to open a documentary on the Spitfire. Caution: bad language is involved.

In 1968, as an unsanctioned celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the British Royal Air Force, pilot Alan Pollock flew his Hawker Hunter jet fighter on an unauthorized binge of low flying. Having just "beaten up" an RAF airfield enroute to his home base, his route took him over central London, where he circled the Houses of Parliament three times and dipped a wing to the RAF Memorial. Then he was faced with a tempting opportunity.

He later wrote, "Until this very instant I'd had absolutely no idea that, of course, Tower Bridge would be there. It was easy enough to fly over it, but the idea of flying through the spans suddenly struck me. I had just ten seconds to grapple with the seductive proposition which few ground attack pilots of any nationality could have resisted. My brain started racing to reach a decision. Years of fast low-level strike flying made the decision simple."

After flying between the two spans and splitting the space between the bridges two upright towers, Pollock went on to wreak similar havoc at several other RAF airfields, including an inverted pass at 200 feet. Within an hour of his return to home base was relieved of flying duties and arrested.

Pollock wasn't the first to thread the needle of the Tower Bridge, but was the first to do so in a fast jet.

In 1984, 37-year-old Vietnam-veteran Marine F-4 pilot Robert Moriarty was in France for an air race, flying a Beech Bonanza. But when engine issues forced him to drop out, he looked around for other ways to slake his thirst for adventure. On March 31, with a passenger filming the deed from the right seat, he took aim at the Eiffel Tower and flew the Bonanza under the arches at the base of the Paris landmark. The video is readily available on YouTube, including Moriarty's puckish look at the camera before engine start and his smiling call, "Ready?"

Asked why he decided to fly under the tower, Moriarty responded, "Just for fun." [The Wikipedia entry does not record what, if any, consequences he faced.]

Plane & Pilot Survey: Martha Lunken And Flying Under Bridges