A Visit to Legend Flyers & Everett Historic Theater

At the October monthly meeting, Dan Hammer gave a wonderful presentation on the restoration of a Japanese Zero fighter. On November 20th, a field trip to Everett was accomplished by me, my wife, Joan, Dave Wood-cock, and Smokey Johnson. The trip had two objectives, a visit to Legend Flyers to see the Zero, followed by a documentary movie, Into Flight Once More, about the reenactment of C-47’s dropping paratroopers in France on D-Day.

The first item of interest was the home of Legend Flyers, a hangar originally constructed for the Air Force as an “alert hangar” for F-102 Delta Dart fighters. These early supersonic fighters were designed to intercept incoming Russian bombers during the “cold war”. The hangars had two doors, one in front and one behind. When scrambled, both doors would open, the fighter would start, taxi directly to the south end of the runway (right outside the door), and launch like a bat out of hell to intercept the bad guys. Must have been exciting to watch. Only the front hangar door is in use these days.

There is only one aircraft in the hangar, the Zero, and it looks brand new. Well it should because the recovered wreckage had suffered serious corrosion and relatively few parts could be used in the reconstruction. Basically it’s a small aircraft with a big engine.

By keeping the weight down, it offered great performance and could out perform any of our fighters at the start of the war in a one-on-one dogfight. Its weakness was a lack of self-sealing fuel tanks and armor. The restoration has been beautifully done.

Our second destination was the Everett Historic Theater in downtown Everett. It was a relic out of the 1900’s, opening in 1901. It instantly took me back to my neighborhood theater where, as kids, our parents would drop us off to see a couple feature, usually westerns, and a news reel. Must have cost all of $.25 .

But we were there to watch Into Flight Once More, a documentary of how fifteen C-47/DC-3’s were organized to return to Normandy to reenact one part of the Normandy invasion on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, June 6th, 1944. The preparation of each of the fifteen aircraft is a compilation of fifteen individual stories themselves, but you need to see the movie to learn more. Suffice it to say that the movie was a moving experience for anyone that appreciates the sacrifices made in WWII.

A subplot of the movie involves two hundred paratroopers who would be dropped over Normandy as part of the reenactment. Their individual preparation was, in it’s own way, just as challenging as that of the aircraft. In the reenactment they didn’t have to jump at night, no one shot at them, and they got to use brand new parachutes.

At the conclusion of the movie there was a panel of three individuals. One was 99 years old and had flown 35 B-17 combat missions over Europe. He walked up the stairs to the stage unassisted and, except for being a bit hard of hearing, was totally engaged. Another was one of the C-47 pilots, and he described the flight over with challenges of weather, fueling stops, maintenance, etc. The third gentleman was one of the 200 paratroopers. The paratrooper told an interesting story. The night of June 5th, they were told that one of the drop aircraft had a mechanical and wouldn’t make the flight. As a result, 20 of the 200 wouldn’t be able to participate. As you can imagine, there were 20 very disappointed jumpers. One of the twenty offered $50,000 to anyone who would give up his place to jump. No one took him up on the offer, such was their dedication to seeing this mission through. Imagine the resolve of the original paratroopers, jumping at night into enemy held territory. It was an emotional movie.