Battle of Britain Day

Today is Battle of Britain Day, 70 years ago the battle reached its height and as it became evident that the Luftwaffe could not destroy Fighter Command, Adolf Hitler was forced abandon his plans to invade Great Britain.

This YouTube video of contemporary newsreel reports is evocative of the period.




Of course the commentary is somewhat slanted and there is a lot that isn't mentioned, but then nobody was going to give away the roll that Radar was playing and how the RAF had developed effective command and control  systems.

Battle of Britain 70th Anniversary Commemorations

The Battle of Britain, according to official records, commenced on the 10th July 1940 making last Saturday the 70th anniversary of the start of the most famous aerial campaign in history.

Inevitably there are many events and activities taking place across Britain to commemorate the battle and honour those who took part. Some of these are being organised by official bodies while others are of a more private or individual nature, not least the Yorkshire farmer who has created a maze on his land which can only really be appreciated from the air as reported by the BBC.


On Sunday a service was held at the Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le-Ferne in Kent and a gallery of photographs of the event can be found on the Facebook "Remembering the Few - 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain, 2010  page.


Throughout the summer the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight will be displaying at events around the UK and most airshows.






The Royal Air Force website history section has extensive coverage as well as campaign diaries and photographs from 1940.

60th Anniversary of the Spitfire's First Flight Airshow 1996

The prototype Spitfire made its maiden flight on 5th March 1936 and in May 1996 an airshow was held at Duxford in Cambridgeshire to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this event.

Duxford was a particularly poignant venue as it was, as mentioned in an earlier post, the first  RAF station to operate the Spitfire.On the weekend that the show was held the weather was kind and a great display was put on culminating in a flypast of twenty plus Spitfires.

I took over a hundred photographs on the Sunday with my old Pentax P.30 SLR film camera and recently sorted through them and scanned most into my computer and have now put them together as a slide show on YouTube which you can see here. Not all of the pictures are of the best quality but non-the-less they are are record of the event.



If you would prefer to see these photos at a more leisurely pace and higher resolution they can be viewed as a set on Flickr.

Have you ever wanted to own a Spitfire?

It is certainly and attractive idea for any aviation enthusiast but you would need a very substantial fortune indeed to fulfill such a dream. Last year, April 2009,  an airworthy Spitfire was sold in an auction at the RAF Museum, Hendon by Bonhams auctioneers for over £1.7 million (including fees). The buyer was Steven Brooks a financier and adventurer.


This Spitfire had been salvaged from a scrapyard in South Africa in 1979 by the the South African Air Force and in the subsequent three decades passed through a number of owners being returned to the UK in the early 1980s. Although some initial restoration work was carried out it was the late Paul Portelli, founder of World's End Tiles in London who commissioned Classic Aero Engineering to return aircraft to full flying condition as a two seater, having purchased it in 2002.  



Built at Castle Bromwich in November 1944, serial no. SM520, a Mk.IXe, was first delivered to No. 33 Maintenance Unit at RAF Lyneham for service preparation. In 1948 it was sold to the South African Air Force whose records for the aircraft are incomplete, but it is believed that it operated with the serial number 5563. In 1954 it was sold with several other Spitfires to a scrap metal dealer from whose yard it was subsequently recovered.

The announcement of it sale cause quite a stir in the media and  BBC Television News carried a report on the aircraft just before the auction.

So, assuming you have financial wherewithal, are there any more Spitfires likely to come on the market that you could purchase?

The answer is almost certainly 'Yes', around the world there are many Spitfires in museums and private collections which will, from time to time, become available. Some may not be airworthy but most will have the potential to be restored to flyable condition, after all this one was virtually scrap metal. Currently the Royal Air Force's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight has two Mk.XVIs which it will eventually restore to flying condition. It is most likely that, when completed, one of these will be sold to help finance the flight.

Of course, having acquired your Spitfire the the costs don't stop at the purchase price, it will require maintenance and hangarage, insurance and if it is going to fly it a Certificate of Airworthiness not to mention fuel. Owning a Spitfire, or for that matter any warbird, makes running a Ferrari look like a poor man's pastime.

For a brief history of the Spitfire's development please see my article on Squidoo.




This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

BOAC Promotional Film

Here is a sequence of three videos that I have found on YouTube. They are a complete British Overseas Airways Corporation promotional film from the early 1960s in instalments. There are some nice shots of, then brand new VC-10s, Boeing 707s and a Britannia rigged as freighter having baby elefants among other things loaded.

Of course everything is in the unflapable British stye of the period and everyone has cut glass English accents - not a dropped 'h' to be heard.












Civil Aviation: Boeing 707 and Bac Vc 10

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Hardy, Wilf


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Bristol Britannia

Known as the "Whispering Giant" the Britannia was powered by four Bristol Proteus engines and entered service with BOAC in 1957 and was the result of the Type III specification of the Brabazon Committee.

The Britannia suffered an unusually long gestation, the Ministry of Supply originally issued a contract for three prototypes in 1948, with Bristol Centaurus radial piston engines. However BOAC, who it was envisaged would be the main operator, preferred the Proteus turboprop and following a good deal of wrangling this became the standard powerplant for the type. The first prototype made its maiden flight on 16th August 1952 but a number of issues delayed the aircraft's entry into fare earning service, by which time the major airlines were committed to investing in a new generation of jet powered airliners.

In the end only 85 Britannias were built, although Canadair obtained a license to produce a couple of versions in Canada known as the Argus and Yukon.

The main operaters of the Britannia were BOAC (15, Model 102 and 18, Model 318) and the Royal Air Force who operated twenty C Mk.1s (Model 252) in the troop carrying role and three C Mk.2s (Model 253) combined cargo/troop carrying. Other customers included El Al, Cubana de Aviation,  Aeronaves de Mexico and Ghana Airways.

As they were retired from their original operators many were sold on to smaller airlines around the world and a few soldiered on well into the 1990s before being scrapped or acquired by museums. Preserved examples can be seen in the UK at the RAF Museum Cosford (The subject of the header photo), Duxford and Kemble.



This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Flying Legends 2002

Here is a YouTube slideshow video of photographs that I took at the Flying Legends display at Duxford in 2002. These are all prints that have been scanned and therefore the quality is not as good as I would like, none-the-less they may be of some interest.




Duxford aerodrome is now part of the Imperial War Museum and has a masive collection of historic aircraft as well as tank and military vehicles in the Land Warfare Hall plus a few maritime exhibits.

The airfield in itself is of great histroical significance, constructed in 1918 and first used by No.8 Squadron Royal Air Force, flying Bristol F.2Bs, for most of its operational life it was a fighter station.

A particularly noteable event took place on 4th August 1938 when Supermarine's chief test pilot Jeffery Quill delivered the RAF's first Spitfire to No. 19 Squadron at Duxford.

During the Battle of Britain Duxford was part of 12 Group with  Spitfires of No. 19 Squadron and Hurricanes of No.s 310 & 312 (Czech) Squadrons.

Later in World War Two the airfield became a home to fighter units of the USAAF's 8th Air Force, from mid 1943 untill December 1945 when it was returned to RAF use.

Post war Duxford contined as Fighter Command base receiving a paved runway and operating such types as the Meteor, Hunter and Javelin untill 1961 when it finally closed as an operational military airfield.

1968 saw the return of Spitfires and Hurricanes when the aerodrome became a set for the making of the "Battle of Britain" film, during the production of which, one of the original hangars war blown up without the premission of the Ministry of Defence.

In 1969 the Ministry of Defence declared the site surplus to requirements  and began to look for a buyer, meanwhile the Imerial War Museum were given permission to store some of their larger exhibits on the base. The Museum and several private aircraft preservation groups used the airfield's  facilites to restore exhibits and in 1973 the first airshow was held, with further shows in the following years providing funds to help finance the activities.

In 1977 the runway was bought by Cambridge County Council at which time part of the site was lost due to the construction of the M11 motorway.

Over the ensuing years the Museum has developed the site, noteably constructing the American Air Museum, The Land Warfare Hall and the AirSpace Hall and becoming one of the "must visit" destinations for aviation enthusiasts worldwide.

This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Bristol Brabazon

Here is an interesting video from YouTube about the Brabazon.



The comment about MPs proves that little has changed in 60 years regarding our attitudes to politicians!

The Brabazon was, in the end, a commercial failiure, a classic case of government investing in a project based on a complete lack of understanding of the market developments already in progress.

In 1942, with World War Two still raging the British Government instituted a committee to investigate post war civil aircraft requirements and recommend specifications for aircraft to fulfill those needs. The Minister for Aircraft Production Col Llewellyn asked his predecessor Lord Brabazon of Tara (John Moore-Brabazon) to be the chairman and after taking comprehensive expert opinions its report was delivered on 9th  February 1943. The conclusions called for five designs to meet different requirements, the first of which led directly to the Bristol 167 later christened the Brabazon.

Design work was carried out during the later years of the war and the first prototype built in the immediate post war period made its maiden flight on 4th September 1949 with Bristol's chief test pilot, Bill Pegg at the controls.

Although technically advanced the Brabazon proved to be a white elefant, despite the intention that its main user would be the British national airline BOAC nobody seems to have ever asked their management if they wanted the type. Meanwhile the airline's chairman, no doubt for political reasons, carefully avoided making any statement either confirming or denying the company's intentions regarding purchasing the aircraft.

In 1952 the decision was made to cancel the project with the second prototype under construction, the two airframes were reduced to scrap and only a few pieces of undercarriage remain in museums.

However the vast assembly hall and runway specially constructed at Filton proved to be more enduring and in the end are probably the Brabazon's true legacy justifing the (at the time) eye watering amount of money spent on the project.

Bristol Aircraft Since 1910 (Putnam's British aircraft)


This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

DeHavilland Chipmunk

I have many fond memories of the Chipmunk, back in the late 60s I was in the air cadets and we used to get a couple of air experience flights a year in them. My squadron (No. 493 Kings Heath & Moseley) was in Birmingham and we would go up the Birmingham University Air Squadron based at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire usually in late winter or early spring for a flight and then have a second one at whichever RAF station we were based for our summer camp

De Havilland Chipmunk RAF Museum, Hendon.

The flights lasted about 30 minutes and were conducted with an experienced RAF instructor who would be happy to give you control of the plane and teach the basics of piloting, something few fourteen and fifteen year olds get the opportunity to do. Those of us who stayed in the cadets for several years would gain some flying experience from these flights and the instuctors would take us through more advanced exercises sometimes going as far as performing aerobatics. At the start of each flight, as we were taxiinig towards the threshhold of the runway, the pilot would usually ask how many flights you had already made and tailor the the lesson to your level of experience. Of course he (In those days they were exclusively men) would do all the communication with air traffic control, which meant that he would occupy the front cockpit where the radio controls were located, which would normally have been the students position.

At Shawbury one element that was looked forward to with some anticipation was the pre-flight briefing, in the wrong hands this could have been the most tedious part of the day but fortunately it was carried out by a Flight Lieutenant who understood the value of humour in keeping the attention of an audience and getting exited youngsters to remember important safety regulations. He had many years of flying experience behind him and possesed a seemly limitless fund of funny anecdotes of aviation incidents that he used to reinforce the points he needed to make. He was one of those people who always have time for anyone and was completely aproachable, happy to answer whatever questions we threw at him no matter how silly, in retrospect, they were.

A major feature of these briefings was the wearing and use (In an emergency) of the Irving seat type parachute and one thing I can say is that when you see pictures from WWII of pilots running to their machnes  with this type of 'chute strapped to their posteriors, the photo is a propaganda "set up", you simply cannot run in one if it is properly fitted so that you don't fall out of the harness if you need to use it. The best that you can manage is a stooped shamble in the manner of the great apes with the knuckles of the fingers gently brushing the tarmac!  

This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Restored Lockheed L749 Constellation in Holland

Here is a YouTube video of a Lockheed Constellation  restored to a fully airworthy condition in Holland.

The "Conny"is undoubtedly one of the most charismatic airliners ever to grace the skies so the sight of one taking to the air again is a joy to behold. We all owe the Dutch team who made this possible a big thank you.

                                                                 

Vickers Viking G-AHDW

This rather grainy photograph of an Invicta Airways Vickers Viking was taken by me using a Kodak Instamatic camera at Ostend Airport, Belgium on or about 1st April 1967. I had just disembarked from it having made my first flight, from Manston in Kent, and my first visit to a foreign country.

The Viking was developed from the wartime Wellington bomber using the same wings (metal skinned in place of fabric on all but the early examples), tail planes, fin and undercarriage married to a new fuselage. One feature of the type was, as it had a midwing layout, the main spar passed through the passenger cabin at about knee height, boxed in and covered with carpet and steps either side of it. Anyone passing along the cabin had to clamber over this obstacle and the stewardesses negotiating it in their newly fashionable miniskirts were a cause of considerable delight to our party of teenage schoolboys!


This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Want to Fly a Lightning?

Finding this YouTube video was the inspiration for this blog.

I recall this short film, or at least a variation of it, being shown on BBC TV back in the early sixties, as an RAF recruiting piece. As I remember, it usually appeared early on Saturday afternoons just before the sports coverage (That became the 'Grandstand'  program). Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, I think that it was an edited version with some of the later sequences moved to the begining (e.g. the pilot doing the external pre-flight checks) and the tag line was "Want to fly a tiger", referencing 74 Squadron - the first unit to operate the lightning and whose markings can be seen on the aircraft in the video. I would welcome any feedback on this, either confirming my recollections or correcting them.

Meanwhile, enjoy some pure nostagia!