Update ~ Corrections in Red

This month marks the 16th Anniversary of the death of Frank Sanders, founder of Sanders Aircraft, Unlimited Air Race pilot and one of the greatest Aerobatic pilots of our times.

Sanders' memorable performances in the Hawker Sea Fury T-20, "924," wowed spectators at Air Shows and Air Races throughout the 1970s and 1980s, up through 1989 and the Planes of Fame Air Show in Chino, California. It was at Chino that Sanders performed in his new Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, "The Red Knight," alternating with Rick Brickert, who won the 1984 National Championship in Sanders' Dreadnought, Race 8. Roughly a year after the Chino Show, Sanders' tragically lost his life in the aircraft during an Air Show in Texas. Brickert continued Air Show and Pace Plane duties in a subsequent version of the T-33, also fitted out as "The Red Knight," but he too, was lost in the early 1990s while campaigning the Pond Rutan "Pond Racer."

The surviving Red Knight is now flown by Chris Rounds on the Air Show circuit and dedicated to Brickert, who served as Pace Plane pilot for the second National Air Racing Association (NARA), during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

By Special Request (tm) has received a request for photos of Frank Sanders and the 924 Sea Fury from one of our readers, and we post those here at this time. The images show Sanders and 924 at Stead Airport, Nevada, during the 1988 Air Races, and at Lake Tahoe, during an Air Show in the same time frame. We'll add additional photos as opportunities permit, then transfer this gallery to The Home Pylon.Net, for permanent display. Today, the gallery is featured as part of the year-long Air Racing Extravaganza of 2006, a series of four events leading to and eventually commemorating the Air Racing Centennial in August, 2009.

Photos by Alan Boucher / M. Daniels Collections, except Tsunami and Red Knight at Chino, by M. Daniels.