Ask Mark Meredith what maneuver he likes to fly most in his 1951 DeHavilland Super Chipmunk and his answer is immediate: “I love doing Cloverleafs!”
The well-known aerobatic figure—a loop with a quarter-roll wherein a pilot pulls up and rolls 90 degrees from the airplane’s original heading as it passes through wings-level inverted—is typical of the flowing acrobatics the modified Chipmunk excels at.
Nicknamed “Chippy” as a nod to its origins, N7DW was built as a T.10 Chipmunk, the British version of the Canadian-designed basic trainer. The stylized, leaping Chipmunk on its rudder is a tribute to the Meredith’s Navy service as a bombardier-navigator in the A-6 Intruder. The cheeky rodent mimics the leaping panther emblem of VA-35. One of just 35 or so Super Chipmunks in the U.S., the airplane’s 72-year career is marked by changes that echo the turns/loops of a complete Cloverleaf maneuver.
Its life began in England with the Royal Air Force as one of approximately 735 Chipmunks the service would operate from 1950 to 1996. A sizeable group of nervous young RAF pilots made their first flights in N7DW between 1951 and 1955.
But looking at Chippy now, its origins aren’t obvious. Meredith says the most frequent question he’s asked is, “What kind of airplane is that?”
Underneath, much of the original trainer is still there. Remnants of the other major phases of Chippy’s journey are less visible since Meredith purchased the airplane
