Expanded Backstory

I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. I never really liked it there. I always thought it was way to cold and polluted. The fact that the Detroit river has concrete banks always bothered me. So I decided to get away from it all and see the world. When I was 18 I signed up for one tour of duty with the U.S. Navy. They taught me to fly aircraft. During my tour I saw many exotic locations: the Persian Gulf, The east coast of Africa, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Mediterranean and Hawaii. I decided to live in Hawaii after the service because it was warm and full of wildlife. I became I cargo pilot for hire because I fell in love with visiting exotic locations. I did many odd jobs in the marinas and airfields around Hawaii to help finance my dreams. Soon I found a plane that I could both afford and fall in love with because of it's historical significance. An old cargo pilot was retiring- and selling his U.S. Navy surplus PV-2 Harpoon civillian converted patrol bomber. I bought the flying junk heap and immediately went to work restoring her. I put back in the World War II era weapons and restored the plane back to her original specifications. I gave her a fresh coat of paint and re-christened her the "Amber Eyes" after one of my favorite animals I saw while on tour in the Saharan Africa/ Middle East region, the cheetah.

Soon in my spare time I saw myself drawn to take my plane on far off adventures in search of rare antiques and treasures. When my money in my bank account ran low I would go back to running cargo back and forth between the mainland and Hawaii. One of my wild adventures took me to London, England in search of one of my favorite aircraft, the Messershmitt 163 Komet.

When I was young I loved to hear the old war stories of the surviving American veterans. They are what caused me to become a pilot for the U.S. Navy in the first place! One story that I loved to here was one from an old B-17G waist gunner who flew missions over Germany in 1944. The gunner talked about a German super-weapon, a plane so fast that not even the famous P-51 Mustang had a chance at catching it. He said that this "Komet" took a great toll on their bombers during the mission, and that it scared him to death.

I used much of my cargo hauling money to scour the globe for one of these amazing planes. I finally found and bought a ME-163's airframe from a rich old British land owner, who used the gutted plane as a lawn ornament. I aquired the engine and other parts from several specialty part makers, collectors, and museums from around the world over amny painful grueling months. Soon I had put together a working flyable plane.

When I finally completed it some of my friends and old squadren buddies urged me not to it because of how many German pilots died a fiery death from the two rocket fuels accidentally mixing. I was determined to fly and master this German super-weapon, and I wasn't going to let anyone, not even my most trusted friends, talk me out of it. I succussfully flew the plane over my air strip on the Hawaiian islands, and then I preceded to buzz both my friends and all of the swimmers on Waikiki beach. There's no greater rush than having a high powered rocket strapped to your ass, believe me! Over time I added many modifications to the plane to increase both its engine efficiency and its fuel carrying capacity, increasing it's range to just under 300 miles. I'm sorry, but a stock range of 50 miles just wasn't enough for me. I also added a perminent retractable landing gear so that I wouldn't have to risk dangerous belly landings on the beach.

I named my Komet the "Blue-Blooded Beauty," after one of my favorite cartoon characters from when I was a little kid, Duchess from The Aristocats. The reason why I did a bizarre thing was for personal reasons. Even though I am a pretty tough guy I needed something calming and non-threatening to look at to keep my mind off of the harrowing fact that I was flying an explosive flying bomb that killed hundreds of German pilots!

Once I spotted an old weather beaten plane lying in pieces in the Sahara desert while I was flying supplies over to an African game warden friend of mine. After finishing my cargo run and flew back to the wreckage I had spotted earlier. The bullet-ridden plane turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109E "Emil" from General Erwin Rommel's famous Afrika Corps. It was part of the JG-27 squadren which operated out of Libya in 1942. I took the poor plane home with me and have started to restore it. Currently it is not yet flyable, and is laying in pieces in my hangar. I haven't the money yet to finish restoring it. I have given it a new paint job. The Messerschmitt 109 was a swift and agile pursuit fighter during it's day, so I painted it to look like the fastest and most agile predator of the African desert, the cheetah. Following along the general theme I named the fighter the "Mara Huntress." I kept the original German markings on the plane to honor all the airman on both sides who faught and died over the skies of Africa. I thought I owed it to the poor pilot who died all alone in the sands of the Sahara desert.

Not long after I aquired the Huntress I hit hard financial times. I wasn't bringing in much money, and I had ran up large debts at the bank because of my aquiring of the Huntress. To keep the bank from re-possessing my planes I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I got the money for the bank from a dangerous lone shark. In return for his favor, I had to smuggle guns from the United States into Mexico. I used the fast and agile "Blue Blooded Beauty" for the task, and almost got shot down and caught by the US Border Patrol. This was the first time I had ever done anything illegal, and I was so spooked about being tracked and arrested that I packed up and left Hawaii to find a more profitable part of the country. I ended up in Atlanta, Georgia because I had heard that the economy was booming there, and because it was as almost as warm as Hawaii. So I established my cargo hauling service there and tried to get back to my old life-style again, which had become so corrupted back in Hawaii.