Wednesday was remembrance day. For our American friends, Veterans Day.

At the stroke of 11 AM, a couple of World War II fighter planes flew over the home office.

I have a passion for WWII aircraft.

Not sure what these babies were, but they were single seater radial engined Navy planes I’m pretty sure.

I thought one of them was a Grumman TBM Avenger, a Navy torpedo plane.

I remember The Canadian Warplanes Heritage Museum near Hamilton used to have an Avenger in their collection, but that fire in hangar 3 in ’93 consumed that big blue bird with the folding wings, along with a few others including  a magnificent Supermarine Spitfire and a Hawker Hurricane.

Where ever these planes came from this morning, with that unmistakable rattly-poppy radial engine sound came from… thank you.

Same thing when the Lancaster bomber flies over with those 4 fabulous straight-pipe Packard Merlin V-12′s.

Those sounds get you off your butt and out of your house to look up … and reflect.

These planes are living, working monuments and memorials to the brave men and women who used them to destroy cruel dictatorships to preserve our freedom and way of life.

The Lancaster is one of only 2 in the world still flying.

How lucky we are to have one of them only a few miles away, where with the B-25 Mitchell, Spitfire and others can take to the skies, especially on remembrance day, to remind us what sacrifice and bravery is really all about.

These are the planes pilots and crews from across Canada flew into the teeth of incredible danger day after day, year after year until the job was done and the evil vanquished.

A lot of these brave souls didn’t make it back home.

You may take your poppy off … but the planes are still flying.

It’s the sound of history, of victory, of bravery and sacrifice.

Thank you Vets…

“Never have so many owed so much… to so few!” – Winston Churchill

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.