The air up there - Vintage aircraft form backdrop for big-band event
<p>Steve Bakke flies a Navy Corsair as pictured from the cockpit of the AT-6 Harvard flown by Frank Hale over Flathead Lake. Both planes will be on display during Saturday’s Sentimental Journey big-band dinner dance.</p>
<p>Bakke prepares to put the wings down and go for a flight in the F4U-5 Corsair at Glacier Park International Airport.</p>
<p>Steve Bakke pilots a Navy F4U-5 Corsair over Flathead Lake on May 29.</p>
We were somewhere over Bigfork when his voice crackled into the noise-canceling headphones.
“Have you ever done aerobatics before?” asked Steve Bakke, a pilot at Tamarack Air.
I punched the little intercom button. “No. Let’s do some.”
Bakke had me cruising at well over 200 knots over Flathead Lake in a restored F4U-5 Corsair, one of only a handful of the planes still in working condition. He was showing off the vintage plane to draw interest for the Sentimental Journey, a big band dinner dance sponsored by the Flathead County Republican Women.
Caroline Solomon, one of the organizers of the event, said her group uses the event as a way of raising money for local students. The Flathead County Republican Women give $1,000 each year to an FVCC student and $1,000 to local high school graduates.
“We donate books and scholarships with the proceeds,” Solomon said. “We had 180 people attend last year.”
Her husband, Harry, is a retired Vietnam-era pilot who flew 169 photo-reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. The Solomons have a vested interest in aircraft, making the Sentimental Journey a natural fit for the couple to support.
The second annual event, a dance with the Don Lawrence Orchestra, will be held in the Thompson-Tamarack Air hangar June 15 from 5:30 to 11 p.m. Ticket-holders can spend the night dancing, mingling and eating catered food among the planes in the hangar owned by local entrepreneur Ray Thompson.
Soaring amid tufted white clouds along the spine of the Rockies, the extremely loud, extremely fast Corsair has been Bakke’s favorite aircraft to fly.
“You feel like you are one with the airplane,” he said. “It really inspires confidence.”
Tom McElwain, a Flathead County Republican and supporter of the event, said the appeal of the event among the planes was obvious.
“It’s really a unique opportunity to have a fine meal, dance to a great orchestra and reminisce about the ‘greatest generation,’” he said.
The F4U-5, a later model of the Corsair, was built after World War II. The Corsair was best known for its folded wings on aircraft carriers in the Pacific Theater. It and its interservice rival — the F6F Hellcat — battled Japanese Zeros over the specks of sand and nearly endless blue below.
Doing rolls and loops over Flathead Lake — the latter of which put me through more than five G-Forces at the peak — the raw power of the American-engineered Corsair was apparent.
The last Corsair was retired by the Honduran Air Force in 1979. Its 2,000-horsepower, air-cooled engine made it one of the fastest and most lethal fighters of its day.
Nowhere was that more clear than when Bakke spotted his fellow pilot Frank Hale several miles away flying a bright yellow AT-6 Harvard (a long-used “trainer” aircraft) and pulled alongside it seemingly in moments to take photos.
Both planes, along with a 1928 Travel Air 6000, will be in attendance for the event. Tickets are $60 each and are sold at Sykes’ in Kalispell until June 10. A ride in the Travel Air is up for auction.
For more information, call Caroline at 837-4525 or Toot at 837-7283 or go to www.fcrwomen.org.
Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.