The Red Knight

The Red Knight (from Andrew Henwood on flickriver)

I think it was the summer of 1959, that we went to see an Air Show in Fort William. I remember seeing the RCAF Golden Hawks perform. I also remember us walking on a large asphalt surface to look at a large number of static plane displays on the ground.

I am not sure if it was the same air show, but I also remember watching a performance by the Red Knight. This might have been at a later event in Fort William or Edmonton. The Red Knight was an RCAF pilot who flew a red painted T-33 Silver Star in a solo aerobatic performance.

I remember that I loved the look of the sleek red jet and the vertical flights and hammerhead turns. As I was watching him perform, I started really getting into the aircraft maneuvers, and I suddenly started to feel a sense of what it was like to be flying the plane. As the plane made its turns, I felt like I was in the plane and could feel the G-forces affecting me. I suddenly sensed that I could remember flying that jet or one like it. I turned to my brothers and told them "I'm the Red Knight. I'm the Red Knight." Of course they thought I was talking nonsense.

The Red Knight (from forces.gc.ca)

The T-33 was the jet that Lt. Moncla received his advanced flight training, while stationed at Reese Air Force Base, in Lubbock, Texas. A side note of some interest was that the call name assigned to Moncla and Wilson's last flight was "Avenger Red".

I think it was that fall that I first entered school which was right behind our house on Moodie Street. At recess we played various games like tag and cops and robbers I guess. One of the boys had an idea of played that we were Jet Fighters. He started with his back against the wall and his arms stretched out and swept back like and F-86. He would start slowly and then accelerate to a run, and then bank of in one direction or another before returning back to his original spot.

I really got into the idea of pretending I was in a fighter jet, and was playing this game by myself, long after the other boys lost interest in it.

RCAF F-86 - (revived) on display at Abbotsford Airshow

Note: My recollection of watching the airshow happened while I was driving on my trip to Madison in late 2001. I had just been daydreaming about the times our family had when we lived in Thunder Bay. When I had the memory of watching the Red Knight, I wasn't even completely sure that there was such an act and I thought, well maybe this was something I was imagining had occurred. When I got back from my trip, I searched the Internet and found out that there had been such an airshow performer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I asked my brother about this, and he told me that the time we went to the airshow in Fort William, that the featured acts included the Golden Hawks. He could also remember that we had seen the Red Knight perform. He didn't remember that I had told them that I was the Red Knight, but of course, at that time, he just thought this was just a very stupid story that I was making up.