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Houston Chronicle...
Posted by Jason Pence on Sun Oct 19, 2003 10:42:00 PM
In reply top T-6 down in Houston? posted by Lynn on Sat Oct 18, 2003 09:11:54 PM
Houston Chronicle has just released the name of the pilot killed in the FM-2 crash. Blue skies, Bill Johnson...
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 9:02 PM
Subject: Wildcat crash
Oct. 19, 2003, 7:29PM
Pilot killed at air show identified
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Handout photo
Bill Johnson, right, shown with wife Linda, died in plane crash in Clear Lake shortly after Friday's Wings Over Houston Airshow. Johnson was flying a vintage WWII plane.
William K. Johnson died doing what he wanted to do all his life -- fly a World War II warplane.
"One of the last words he spoke to me was, 'Boyd, I'm living a dream,'" Johnson's brother-in-law, Boyd Parsons, said Sunday.
Johnson, 62, of Parkton, N.C., died Saturday when the Grumman FM-2 Wildcat he was flying crashed in a field off Clear Lake City Boulevard as it made its final landing approach at Ellington Field shortly after 6 p.m.
He had participated in Saturday's Wings Over Houston Air Show at Ellington earlier in the day.
The single-engine Wildcat was manufactured in 1944 by General Motors and is owned by American Air Power Heritage Group, but it is flown and maintained by the Commemorative Air Force at its headquarters in Midland.
Johnson had 6,000 hours of flying time when he joined the CAF in 1999, said Bob Rice, CAF president.
"Among his peers he would have been seen as a very experienced pilot," Rice said.
Johnson, a retired air traffic controller, had owned three vintage military aircraft: a PT-17 Stearman trainer, an SNJ-6 Navy advanced trainer and a British AT-19 Reliant navigational trainer, Rice said.
Parsons said Johnson underwent three years of training before he was allowed to fly the Wildcat for the CAF.
"His dream was to fly a Navy combat fighter from World War II," he said.
Rice said Johnson had flown the Wildcat in several other air shows, most recently in Midland.
Johnson was the airboss, who orchestrates airshows, for the CAF Carolinas Wing. The plane was based in Franklin, Va., he said.
Officials said Johnson was participating in a photo opportunity along with several other planes when the crash occurred.
Authorities had not determined the cause of the crash as of Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board said an investigator had been sent to the crash site.
The Grumman Wildcat, like the one destroyed in the crash, was delivered to the Navy in 1940 and was used in every major naval battle in the Pacific during World War II.