“Spirit of Lewis”

Together with my new paint, I also got a nose-art. Let the President in those days, the late CAF Colonel Bernard Delfino, explain us the origin of the name and the nose-art:

“In the early days of the French Supporter Squadron, one of our members, Lewis Bateman, a British citizen living in the area of Toulouse (SW of France), and CAF-lover, brilliant aeronautics engineer at the origins of the Airbus Family, became one of our more active and passionate members. CAF Colonel, he helped the association as much as he could for several years, in a very efficient way. His kindness and his interest for the Squadron became quickly mythic, and we owe him many successful projects. Til year 2000, when he became ill and left us much too soon.

We acquired our Piper Cub after his death, in 2003. So, it is in his honor that we christened the airplane, with an aeronautical pun “Spirit of Lewis”, in reference to the famous “Spirit of St-Louis” flown by Charles Lindbergh, and that I imagined creating this modest logo of a Firefly, which was his favorite aircraft, from when he begun in aviation, more precisely in the british naval aviation, the Fleet Air Arm, where he was in charge of maintaining this beautiful plane, especially during the Korean war.”

A Fairey Firefly restored in Royal Navy colors.