Aviation Historian 17
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P.Fiddian - The Stefan Karwowski Factor
Stefan loved to fly high-performance vintage warbirds like the Bearcat, but placed high demands on them, a fact not always appreciated by their owners. The famous BBC presenter Raymond Baxter described Stefan as "a virtuoso in his field; he was to aerobatic flying what Yehudi Menuhin is to music..."
MICHAEL O'LEARY'S photograph of Stephen Grey's Grumman Bearcat flying from Duxford on May 6, 1985 in the hands of Howard Pardue
By the summer of 1982 Stefan had found a new outlet for his audacious displays in the form of Stephen Grey’s potent Grumman F8F Bearcat, in which he is seen here in June of that year. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in July 1981, Karwowski explained that “a modern warbird is a highly stressed aeroplane, put together without any fat... comparing it with a civilian aircraft is like comparing a taxi with a racing car”.
Stefan brings the scarlet-painted G-HUNT in to land after another typically spine-cracking display at RNAS Yeovilton’s Air Day in August 1980.
Adrian Gjertsen at the controls of G-HUNT during the Hunter’s display at RAF Valley on August 15, 1981. Built at Kingston as an F.51, G-HUNT originally served as E-418 with the Royal Danish Air Force from June 1956 until 1975. Spencer Flack acquired it minus its powerplant in 1978, obtaining an Avon engine from an Air Training Corps unit in Balham.
The dynamic duo - G-HUNT and Flack’s Spitfire FR.XIV G-FIRE perform a scorching high-speed run at the Biggin Hill Air Fair in May 1981. In its obituary, Flight International described Karwowski as having ‘‘a responsible attitude to display flying [which] was exciting but never reckless”.
Stefan Karwowski in the seat of Hunter G-HUNT during his relatively short but extremely memorable tenure as its chief pilot during 1980-82.
Stefan was not only confined to flying the Hunter for Flack’s “Elstree Air Force”; he frequently displayed G-FIRE too and is seen here in the Spitfire’s cockpit at Yeovilton in August 1981. Karwowski never forgot that his chief job was to entertain, and always made the effort to connect with his audience.
The original incarnation of the four-aircraft Carling Red Caps aerobatic team in 1974. From left to right: Bill Loverseed (team leader); Mike O’Hanlon (right wing and Stefan’s room-mate); Karwowski (left wing); Debbie Gary (slot and first woman pilot of a full-time professional aerobatic team) and team manager/ferry pilot/commentator Nick Daniel.