These two pictures show sections of Ambassador fuselage ( early to mid 50s) and two Vampire pods (1959).These were located next to a gravel road that ran from the Flying Club hangar round towards the DH flight shed at Christchurch . Also in the same area at that (late 50s) time was a Vampire or Venom twin boom and tail assembly plus a large amount of unidentified jigs etc.
So , the question is does anyone know anything at all about this stuff …identities ,are they real rather than mockups………….where it all went …anything?
Photos by Mike Phipp.
By: daveg4otu - 19th February 2017 at 11:52
Sorry Dave, more thread sidelines. Summer school at Lee on Solent and the helicopters of 22 Sqn. ignited my aviation life, didn’t become a chopper pilot, only fixed wing.
Anyway, back to thread, like all the heads in the photo without bodies!
Sidelines are good!
L1972 I spent a large amount of my childhood about 400yds west of the runway end at Christchurch….If you think a Vampire was noisy/spectacular , they were almost quiet compared to the DH110 and Sea Vixens a few years later.,
NewForest …..The bodies….
By: farnboroughrob - 19th February 2017 at 10:57
Would the ambassador not be a structural test example as all aircraft are accounted for? The Vampire T11 could well be a mock-up, or a prototype? The pod on the right looks like a Sea Venom, so again mockup or prototype?
Interesting photos anyway.
Rob
By: Newforest - 19th February 2017 at 08:00
Sorry Dave, more thread sidelines. Summer school at Lee on Solent and the helicopters of 22 Sqn. ignited my aviation life, didn’t become a chopper pilot, only fixed wing.
Anyway, back to thread, like all the heads in the photo without bodies!
By: L9172 - 18th February 2017 at 19:12
This is absolutely nothing to do with subject of this thread but reading it brought back to me a memory of my boyhood that had escaped me for many, many years.
In the very early fifties my mother and I went on holiday to stay with a friend of hers in Christchurch and one day the two of us took a picnic and went for a walk in the countryside. Around lunchtime we stopped in a gateway to a field along the country lane we had been walking down and sat there to eat our lunch. During the meal a jet engine started up on the other side of this field and soon a Vampire took off, heading directly towards us.
Of course he was airborne long before he reached us and was probably at least a hundred feet up by the time he whooshed over our heads, but to me, a young boy, it was the most exciting thing that had happened to me since the air raids and I can still remember saying “Wow!” What my mother said I can’t remember (probably just as well).
Sorry to have taken up space on this thread, but this memory of bygone days suddenly hit me as I read it and looked at the photographs. This event was probably a part of the reason for my over-riding interest in elderly aviation that lives with me to this day.
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February 18, 2017 at 5:34 pm