John R Sandberg (JRS) / Tsunami - Racing - Sharon Sandberg

Why Rebuild Tsunami?

With your help, we would like to rebuild Tsunami to flyable condition. John Sandberg did engines for almost every major museum in the world. He donated almost every engine used for the EAA Warbirds of America; plus the engine for the Spirit of St. Louis. He put together the complete maintenance engine programs for the CAF aircrafts, etc. Because of this, our intention is to put the plane on tour for a couple of years to various airplane museums and then to find a permanent home for it to be on display.

Photo courtesy of warbird.com

Tsunami is unique for the following reasons:

As stated in the article titled Tsunami by Jack Cox in the Sport Aviation December 1986 issue (2.7 mb), Tsunami finally answered the question so many had asked since the WWII surplus fighters had taken over the unlimited air racing in 1946: "What if you took a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and built the smallest, lightest, sleekest airframe around it you could possible dream up?" Tsunami answered this question.
It was, and still remains, the first original homebuilt unlimited racer since 1939.
Tsunami was the fastest homebuilt piston prop plane in the world.
Tsunami was, and still remains, the only homebuilt air racer qualified in the Gold heat race; only 1 month after the original flight.
The last race Tsunami was in September of 1991 (photo above). She pushed a record speed of over 500 mph. Again, a first for a homebuilt unlimited air racer.

Tsunami represents all of this and so much more. The Legacy of Tsunami continues. See photos of Tsunami as it was removed from its trailer on the Fund Raising page.

More Information About Tsunami

We have photos of the 1979-1986 Original Build of Tsunami that you can view by clicking on this link.

Click here to read "The Legends of Air Racing... Engineer Bruce Boland by Scott Germain (416 kb Adobe PDF file) - WarbirdAeroPress.com. Bruce Boland was the designer of Tsunami.

Skyfire Video (no affiliation with us) has photos and video of Tsunami for sale. You can view some of the video on their site.

Another great photo of Tsunami in the pits at the Reno Air Races can be seen here.

Note: If you have high speed internet, (it is 88 megabytes in size) watch an episode about John R Sandberg and the Tsunami. It was part of a 1989 TV show called "Hidden Heroes". The video is done as streaming video in Apple's Quicktime format.

Supporters of Tsunami

You can be a supporter of restoration of Tsunami. Go to our fund raising page to learn more on how you can help.

The following is a list of people whose names appeared on the landing gear that Dad recognized as supporters of the original aircraft. Our goal is to provide a bio of everyone we can find one for. If you know of information on any of these supporters, please pass it along to us.

Anderson, Brad	Anderson, Paul
Anderson, Tom	Benson, Greg
Billstrom, Ron	Bjornstad, Andrew (grandchild)
Bjornstad, Bobby (grandchild)	Bjornstad, Janet (Daughter Janet passed away 10 years ago in August of this year)
Bjornstad, Johnny (grandchild)	Bjornstad, Stephen (Janet’s husband)
Blomgren, Jim (Linda’s husband)	Blomgren, Linda (Daughter)
Blomgren, Michael (grandchild)	Boland, Bruce (Original Designer) - Passed away
Boland, Dorell (Bruce’s Wife)	Bolduc, Darrell
Brown, Tom	Cabe, Chuck - still at Chino
Carbo, Tony	Cox, Golda (Worked for the EAA in publishing)
Cox, Jack (worked for the EAA in publishing)	Dale, Jim (was crew chief for two years) - works for Rod Lewis in Texas
Dormanen, Mike	Eckstrom, Bob
Eldridge, Kevin - still at Chino	Emery, Tom
Enerson, Scott	Erickson, Ed
Evans, Bruce	Fautch, Gary
Fieber, Greg	Fiedler, Gary
Fraser, Don	Fruen, Todd
Garagliano, Tom	Good, Roxanne
Hinton, John - still at Chino	Hinton, Karen - still at Chino
Hinton, Steve (Pilot for 4 years) - still at Chino	Holm, Skip (Pilot for 2 years)
Iverson, Barry	Janson, Don
Jenn, Walter	Kalross, Roger
Korth, Sam	Kunicki, Brandon - worked for Fighter Rebuilders on the project after it was moved to Chino. Click on name for more info.
LaQuey, Kermit - deceased	Law, Pete
Levitz, Gary - deceased	Levitz, John
Levitz, Shelley	Lindgren, Peter
Lipinski, Steven	Lipinski, Tom
Mabrey, Ray	Maloney, John - still at Chino
Mc Dougall, Mike	McGuckian, Mike - http://westpacrestorations.com/
Mech, Nick	Minnick, Warren
Mitchell, Jim (Skyfire video owner)	Moja, Bill
Monroe, Kelley (crew chief for 2 years)	Mortin, Brian
Mosal, Warren (drove the support rig)	Nachtigal, Joel
Norton, Bob	Obert, Jim
Palmer, Rich - works for Jim Beasley in PA	Patterson, Robbie - still at Chino
Pennington, Don - works for the film industry building movie props in the Los Angeles area	Poberexney (Pope) Paul
Poberezney, Tom	Poe, Ray (one of the original builders)
Pond, Bob - deceased	Pullis, John
Redick, Al - deceased	Redick, Alby - http://www.aviationclassics.com/
Rogers, John	Rust, Keith
Sandberg, Marilyn (Ex-Wife)	Sandberg, Patty (Ex-Wife, Mother of children)
Sandberg, Sharon (Daughter)	Shannon, Joanne (Current girlfriend)
Singh, Annita (grandchild)	Sizer, Roger
Skurich, Darrell	Smith, Bob
Smith, Davidson	Timmerman, George
Torvik, Sam (head wrench)	Voegle, Butch
Walker, Dave	Wallace, Lane
Watts, Gary - still at Chino	Westerlund, Andrew
Westerlund, Beth	Westerlund, Jack
Wilkins, Jerry - still at Chino	Will, Larry
Will, Richard	Wojciak, Al - http://westpacrestorations.com/
Woolston, Bud	Wozniak, Jennifer (grandchild)
Wright, Mike	Yoak, Bill