05/31/2007. Remarks by Bill Ewing: "This is the Hawker Sea Fury FB.Mk.11 (WH589, side number 115) purchased from the Australian Navy surplus stocks by RCAF F/L Ormond Haydon-Baillie. Ormond got the US Navy to bring home the cocooned plane aboard one of their carriers. Once it was unloaded in San Diego he had it stripped and changed out the original cartridge starter with a 24V electric from a Hercules. Then he fired it up and headed north to Canada.

He never made it, en route the drive-shaft on the oil pump sheared. So he headed for the first available landing place, the super secret USAF Base at Beale, California, home to the SR-71! With a last final frantic maneuver, he lifted over the old gold diggings off the end of the main runway there and set it down. He was immediately surrounded by many armed USAF Air Police. Ten minutes with the Base Commander, Ormond was having the Sea Fury towed into the main hangar. After installing a working Centaurus obtained in Calgary, Alberta, away he flew to CFB Cold Lake.

While there he and I stripped all the heavy armor plate from behind the seat, and overhauled the entire hydraulic system. Then came time for a paint job. He flatly refused to fly a "Navy" aircraft and wanted an Air Force scheme. The Air Force never flew Sea Furys but using the RAF Tactical scheme I was able to come up with a suitable scheme for him. (The 'HB' fuselage codes applied to the plane actually were used by an RAF Mosquito squadron.) Canadian Pacific Airlines painted the Sea Fury in their big hangar in Vancouver.

The figure on the wing in the photo is Ormond Haydon-Baillie. He's got his nose into the fuel tank for a visual check of the level. The photo was taken in the Canadian Pacific Airlines hangar in Vancouver just prior to his initial flight after painting. While airborne, the tower informed him that something long and thin had been seen to come off in flight. There was some rain and when he stepped onto the wing after the flight, he was unceremoniously ejected off the trailing edge of the wing to land on his backside on the tarmac. The missing piece was the wing-walk which had been loosened by the rain and removed by the slipstream.

When Ormand took his departure from Canada and returned to his family home in England he took with him the Sea Fury, as well as his "Black Knight" T-33, and a boat-load of Bolingbrokes with spares and engines. This Sea Fury crashed in 1979 while registered G-AGHB, the wreckage was used to build Unlimited Category racer number "15" "Furias" as N44348."