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  • Lt. Phil Fillingham RN (Ret.)
  • Foil: 5 Panel: 3 Column: 3 Line: 72

    Wall of Honor Level:
    Air and Space Friend

    Honored by:

    Growing up in England between the two World Wars Phil was fortunate to live half way between the Vickers and Hawker Aircraft factories and so became familiar with lumbering old Vimy bombers and spritely Hart biplane fighters whose occupants sometimes waved to a 10 year old boy on the ground!
    Those were the years of the graceful Supermarine S6B seaplane winning the Schneider trophy. The R34 and R-100 airships droned overhead blotting out the sky. So in 1944 Phil
    volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm of the British Royal Navy, ge11ing his wings in 1945 he spent two years aboard on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and then converted to helicopters and in 1950 went to work as a commercial helicopter pilot. When he retired in 1981 he had acquired 13,300 helicopter flight hours with experience flying in
    locations as varied as Newfoundland, Northern Manitoba ,
    Venezuela, Colombia, Alaska, California, Colorado and the Gulf of Mexico. Landing areas varied all the way from sea level to over l4,000 feet ASL. Locations from Louisiana swamps to Manhattan heliports. Phil is now retired and lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York state.

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