"It all started with a book," smiled Shona Bowman while showing me around her and partner Laurie Gregoire's award-winning Cessna Bird Dog. Sitting on the hallowed grass at Old Warden in Bedfordshire, the aeroplane sports all of the classic lines of the US aviation giant's world-beating type - yet looks uncharacteristically sinister with a warload of rockets under the wings.Built in 1951 as part of the second production batch of Cessna model 305As as a L-19A Bird Dog bound for the United States Army, the aeroplane that would go on to become G-VNAM was curiously allocated instead to the United States Air Force (USAF) as 51-4781 - although the service never operated what it designated the O-1A in Vietnam. In fact, it sent all of its As, including 4781, back to the Wichita, Kansas-based manufacturer for modification to O-1G specification (designated the Cessna model 305D by the US giant), before deploying them to the front line.
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