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BERNARD DELFINO COLLECTION

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Bernard Delfino is a retired licensed aircraft engineer living in France with a passion for WWII "warbirds". In 1991 he achieved a long-time goal to visit the annual Confederate Air Force Airshow in Midland, Texas. Bernard says "I was amazed by the quality of the show, the friendly spirit that prevails among CAF members, the high level of respect for veterans, and the patriotism."

The impact made on Bernard resulted in his undertaking of a process that would lead to the creation of the French Wing of the CAF in 1996, located in the Paris suburb of Aulnay Sous Bois. In the years since, under Bernard's leadership, the French Wing has grown to 100 members.

The Wing owns two aircraft, an airworthy 1945 Piper Cub, and a 1936 Rearwin 8500 Sportster in long-term restoration. In addition, the Wing is caretaker for a 1953 SNCAN 856 Norvigie (F-AZHA c/n 25) owned by Bernard and four other Wing members.

In order to provide illustrations for the Wing's bi-lingual newsletter which Bernard produces, he began taking photographs of aircraft. This developed into a serious hobby. Now his photographs are used by the CAF for their publications and postcards, and have been published in various magazines. Bernard uses a Nikon D-300 with two main lenses, a Nikkor Zoom 16-85 VR and a Nikkor 70-200 VR with TC-14E converter.

Bernard was born in 1946 in Nice. In 1962 he began work as an aircraft mechanic with the French Navy (Aéronavale) specializing in overhauls of Alouette II helicopters. In 1968 he became employed by British Airways as an aircraft mechanic in Paris. The last 20 years of his career were spent as a Duty Engineer in Paris where he led a team of mechanics working on British Airways aircraft and those of numerous other airlines as well.