Here's a new article on the owner of this Kittyhawk:
War plane patron makes no apologies for military help
By Bruce Cheadle (CP) – 20 hours ago
GATINEAU, Que. — The story of Vintage Wings of Canada, a charitable foundation that blends Canadian history, flyboy wonder and hotrod mentality, reads like some modern feel-good parable:
Be careful what you acquire, lest your possessions take on a life of their own.
For Mike Potter, the multimillionaire founder of Ottawa software company Cognos, lifelong aviation enthusiast and Vintage Wings benefactor, his fateful indulgence was the purchase of a 1945-vintage Supermarine Spitfire XVI.
Only eight years later, it's the reigning diva of a breathtaking (and growing) collection of 13 airworthy vintage aircraft - and an enterprise that is quietly evolving into one of this country's premier aviation history attractions.
With profile comes public scrutiny, and Vintage Wings has also gained recent unwelcome media attention for its mutual backscratching with the Canadian Forces, a relationship that's raised the optics of taxpayer dollars assisting a rich man's playground.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay publicly admonished brass at the Department of National Defence in May after a C-17 military transport made a circuitous return from Afghanistan via New Zealand in order to collect a restored P-40 Kittyhawk for Vintage Wings, free of charge.
There were also grumbles after DND sold the foundation a partially restored Spitfire from Comox, B.C., this spring for $1.
Potter, 65, and long retired from Cognos, welcomes the scrutiny.
Vintage Wings' unique and pricey mix of flying stock, active test pilots, restoration engineers, Canadian military archive and public outreach are something no government-run museum can, will or should take on, in Potter's opinion.
"When people like us put $20 million-plus of private money into recognizing Canada's aviation heritage, as a taxpayer I'd like people in government to encourage and assist them when they can," he says of DND's help.
During a recent visit to the pristine Vintage Wings hangar at tiny Gatineau Airport, Potter made an eloquent case for what he hopes will become a sustainable, hands-on, educational foundation that will long outlive him. (www.vintagewings.ca)
"We're an institution with a public outreach perspective, not a private club."
He acknowledges, however, it all began as a rich man's hobby.
The Spitfire, purchased in California in 2001, was bought for the sheer thrill of learning to fly an iconic war bird.
Potter painted it in authentic RCAF colours and then offered to unveil it at the nearby Canadian Aviation Museum, just across the Ottawa River, with veterans and their families in attendance. It was the only operational Spitfire in Canada.
"I still saw it as a personally owned airplane," he says in his quiet, almost diffident manner.
What happened next is part of Vintage Wings "folklore." The overwhelming public reaction convinced Potter he had a mission.
Hundreds turned up, including former Spitfire pilots - some in wheelchairs - who were hoisted up onto the wing and into the cockpit, to applause and tears. Teens looked at great-grandfathers with wide-eyed wonder.
"It was a very intense experience," said Potter. "The turning point was right there."
The idea bloomed of an organization "focused on commemorating history and recognizing our heroes and educating the public, particularly young people."
Potter doesn't paint it as philanthropy.
"It wasn't me sitting in the privacy of my own office saying, 'Gee, we could do something more.' It was thrust upon me," he said.
"I was really just the custodian of an important historical artifact and it should be treated that way."
From 2002 to 2005, Potter spent something in excess of $20 million - most from "a single donor, me" - buying planes, building the Gatineau hangar and putting together the team. The foundation followed.
There are now nine full-time paid employees, including some administrative staff and the air maintenance crew led by former air force major Tim Leslie, a test pilot with the National Research Council.
They're supported by some 150 volunteers, from active test pilots to tour guides to restoration assistants, including teenaged cadets and a retired machinist.
Former astronaut Chris Hadfield is a volunteer pilot and is on the foundation's newly broadened board, as are two retired chiefs of air staff.
"We have, I think without any risk of exaggeration, the finest war-bird flight operation you'll find anywhere in the world," Potter quietly asserts.
The Vintage Wings base perches on a cul de sac at the western edge of Gatineau airport. The front doors aren't locked, and a collection of modest offices immediately opens into the immaculate hangar filled with gleaming works of aviation history.
On this day, with the hangar doors wide open and four of the collection's prize pieces - including the Spitfire and a massive, menacing Corsair - off at an airshow in Oshkosh, Wisc., the heady scent of engine oil and hydraulic fluid is noticeably muted.
A handful of volunteers and staff are disarmingly cheerful, including a young woman buffing the already gleaming fuselage of that controversial Kittyhawk.
In a back corner, three more Second World War vintage planes are in various stages of restoration.
"They call the Spitfire the star of the place, but it's really the Lysander," barks Deryck Hickox, an aviation industry retiree recently hired full-time to restore a storied Westland Lysander.
He's overseeing the work of 17-year-old volunteer Renaud Gagne, who's artfully re-covering the spy plane's tailwing.
Potter says the foundation's current focus isn't on physical expansion, but rather reaching a wider Canadian audience.
This summer's flying tour of a restored Golden Hawk F-86 Sabre - Canada's quintessential Cold War fighter - may signal a new operating model for the foundation.
Combining corporate sponsors and DND support, the Sabre is flying 45 public events across Canada with the Snowbirds to mark the 100th centennial of flight in this country.
The visceral public reaction to flying artifacts is one thing that clearly separates Vintage Wings from museums.
When disengaged teens hear a Merlin engine cough to life, then see a brilliantly painted war machine roar off into the blue, "you've got their attention," says Potter.
"Of course, then you don't talk to them like it's a NASCAR race. You talk to them like it's a historical artifact. So you're teaching them history."
Did you know there's a Canadian connection to the disabling of the Bismarck, accomplished in a Fairey Swordfish like the one at Vintage Wings?
Did you know a Canadian, the still-very-much-alive Don Shepherd, was the very first Royal Navy Corsair ace?
Did you know one of Canada's most accomplished living aces, James "Stocky" Edwards, flew a Kittyhawk with identical markings to the one in the Gatineau hangar?
"You can almost always take somebody - no matter how interested they already are - on the floor and surprise them," said Potter.
But he also makes a second case for the working collection, beyond "just marketing" Canadian history.
Museums may preserve artifacts in perpetuity, "but you lose the knowledge of how to maintain it, how to operate it, how to fly it. And we think that's part of the archive, part of history."
The roster of Vintage Wings test pilots are not amateurs out for a joy ride, although their accounts of learning to fly 60-year-old aircraft make highly entertaining reading or listening.
"They're continually trying to understand the relationship between aircraft design and handling characteristics," argued Potter.
Re-visiting the highest performing fighting aircraft of yesteryear is an exercise in seat-of-the-pants flying - an old dog teaching new tricks.
"So these guys get an opportunity to fly something that's out on the edge and much different from what they have been flying," said Potter.
"We're all learning. And we're not just learning about flying old airplanes. We're learning about flying."
Potter's passionate pitch for Vintage Wings ends back where the story began, with him in the cockpit.
As a visiting reporter pulls out of the Gatineau parking lot, a P-51 Mustang - the muscular American counterpoint to the Spitfire - dips and rolls and dives like a kite in the summer sky, its deep-throated rumble barely a bumblebee buzz on the breeze.
Only someone who sees and hears and smells the Vintage Wings collection can judge whether this is a rich man's folly or a national treasure. Defence Minister Peter MacKay should pay a visit.
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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