It's not my imagination after all

[Hagar]

Finally! [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif] I found something I've been looking for for many years. I remember seeing a tiny aeroplane displayed at the 1949 Daily Express Air Pageant* at Gatwick Airport when I was 6 years old. This was even smaller than Betty Skelton's Pitt's Special at the same event which is reputed to have been the smallest aircraft in the world at the time. It was so small that the pilot flew it lying in a prone position on top of the fuselage. Everyone I've told about it thought I am either quite mad or that I'd dreamed about it. Well, this proves them all wrong.
The Bee Aviation Wee Bee. 8-)

Known originally as Beecraft Associates Inc., this company built the diminutive Wee Bee in 1949, in which the pilot lay in a prone position.

*PS. Thanks to Charlie for confirming this event took place. Even people that lived near Gatwick at the time couldn't remember an air show being held there.

PPS. It's easy when you know what you're looking for. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/design/q0214.shtml

[expat]

1949, all I say is " only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun". The windscreen seems a little pointless too.
I wonder if it would get a C of A today?


Matt

[ozzy72]

More likely to get a C of I (Certificate of Insanity)

[spitfire boy]

C of D - Certificate of Divorce. Poor wife, having to put up with a man who was partial to laying prone on a plank of wood with an engine at the front. Oooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh