The Thunderbird - perhaps the most famous wooden boat on Lake Tahoe - went out for a spin on the lake in anticipation of the upcoming Concours d'Elegance boat show Aug. 9-11, 2007, and the Tahoe World was there.
My dad is a Master Marine Mechanic and worked on Lake Tahoe for many a year and had a small business there for a little bit. He was telling me about this boat tonight and I just had to look for this boat. She is a beautiful boat.
My uncle, Mike Steffen used to race wooden hulled boats nationally and internationally. The sound of the engine and the glisten of the hull in the sunshine brings back wonderful memories.
The Thunderbird was the starboat on so many boat magazine covers,30yrs ago I read about the Thunderbird after falling in love with its beauty,It had small 2 bladed props that were over driven 2 to 1 and can top out at 72 mph! Fast even by today's standards!
Nice wooden boat with petrol engines where each uses about 90 gallons per hour of it. I would liked to have heard the engines singing to us. I believe those engines were used in British RAF rescue boats. It was a romantic wooden era where the best mohagany was still available,
If it was built in Bay City Michigan, on the Saginaw River or really close to it, wouldn’t it have been tested on Lake Huron? It’s on the East side of my State. Lake Michigan is on the West side and Lake Superior is North of the Upper Peninsula. I could see it going around the top of the mitten to be tested for a long endurance run...
The only connection between Allison and Merlin is the decades in which they were used. Allison was a division of GM whereas Merlin was designed and built by Rolls Royce in England. 55,000 or so Packard Merlins were built by the Packard car company in the USA - again they were not connected to Allison.
Andy Bagnall I guess it comes down to your perspective. For the USA, it began in December of 1941, just as the (American) announcer said. For Poland, France, and England? Earlier... 1939 to 1941. For Japan and China, it was in July of 1937. So, why are you calling this guy a dickhead, Andy? It's all relative. Running low on Prozac?
seabulls69 "...he didn't use her much. She had 83 hours on her when he parked her in the boat house in December of 1941 at the beginning of World War II...." RU-vid is a global not an American community and therefore his statement is incorrect. Wikipedia says "...the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939..." and it is well known that many US volunteers had fought alongside the Allies prior to Pearl Harbour. I'm not knocking the USA and in fact my family and I love our many trips to the land of the free - one in particular lasted 4 months with an RV tour of 43 States and a side trip to Tahoe, hence the interest.
