This aircraft is a USAF North American F-86 Sabre. A ground crew is using an H1 heater to blow warm air into the engine before startup. This procedure is crucial in extreme winter conditions to prevent the oil and fuel from freezing. The scene likely takes place at Goose Bay, Canada, around 1954.
The father of a good friend told stories about being stationed at the old Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. In the winter, when a plane landed, they would drain the oil from the engines and keep it inside the hangar and only put it back in when the plane was ready to leave. He was fond of saying, "It got so cold the oil turned into fudge!"
ReplyDeleteThe extreme cold is why a lot of the northern Canadian and Alaskan freight services still use older prop aircraft instead of jets. More likely to startup in the frigid conditions. See Buffalo Airways, Air Tindi and a few others.
ReplyDeletecool paint job !
ReplyDeleteDespite its vintage, the F86 is still up there in my top three prettiest planes of all time. Dunno exactly why.
ReplyDeleteReckon it is because ... well, for me, because i grew up with them being portrayed in near every movie I saw.
DeleteTo be fair we lived very foreign back then, and the movies were 20 years old time we got to see them
Some say the F-86 Sabre died more often from the intubation, as shown above, than they did from the 'rona
ReplyDeleteIt just looked right, like the Mustang. Anyone stuff a modern very hi performance engine in one, see how it flies?
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