An all white Lancaster appeared on the approach…

NX611/WU-15 in South Africa

I remember seeing a photo of WU-15 somewhere which showed her staging through South Africa (Cape Town ?) during the 1950s.

Anyone else seen it, got it, scanned it?

ha ha !!!

😀

Ha Ha !!!—-Roger D Dave, I can stick some more pics on that too–LOL.

Bill T.

Hey I keep meeting such great people on this forum!!
Thankyou all for saying such really nice things about the pics.

WV-903:
I think I had better start another thread to show you the ‘Blue Steel’ Valiants..there just doesn’t seem to be any way to stop ‘thread creep’…I’m certainly very prone to it!

Dave T.

Edinburgh / Woomera Valiants.

[B][SIZE=”2″]
Hi Dave,
Any chance of posting the pics. you have of those Valiants,that passed through Changi, Bound for UK from 4JSTU Edinburgh Field, Sth. Aussie.
Love to see them, as I wasn’t involved with them at all but they were Serviced in “Our” Hanger there. I don’t remember the Blue-Steel cut-outs in under-sides , but then again , I forget a lot these days. ( It’s called —-OLD AGE—-LOL 😀 )

Your pics. of RAF Changi have got my thought processes going and seeing the Accomodation Blocks up on the hill, I remember I stayed in “Transit ” there for 3 Days in Oct. 1962, before moving to Aussie, I got the Local tailor there who operated from the Blocks to make me up a KD set of uniforms. Probably even bumped into you too as you were around. I remember the PSP Pan and Gun emplacements ( Manned ) around perimeter and seeing all the Hastings parked up. This was definately the best years of the RAF as I knew it. Somewhere I have some Colour slides I took of Changi Camp when I was there. I’ll post them here, but don’t think there are Aircraft on them.

I’ve posted in “Reluctant Sea-Hawk” also, 😀 so have a look there.

Bill T.

Longshot:

Indonesian Albatross 301

I believe this is early December 1962 as the film also has pics of the Brit commandeered to get troops to Labuan in a hurry when the Indonesian’s attacked Brunei.

DT

Wow!Magic, Postfade!!! 🙂 Thanks for that!

Longshot:

Indonesian Albatross 301

I believe this is early December 1962 as the film also has pics of the Brit commandeered to get troops to Labuan in a hurry when the Indonesian’s attacked Brunei.

DT

[QUOTE=Postfade;1361919]
Yes I have some good shots of one particular Indonesian Albatross. It arrived at the civil airport Paya Lebar when things were ‘hotting’ up over the Malaysian Federation issue. A USAF Sabreliner called in same time. They then both returned to Changi. I think some US diplomacy was going on, possibly with Malaya involved, to get the politics sorted. Sukarno wasn’t having it though and later we had USNavy photographic SkyWarriors that I do know were overflying Borneo and going on to Townsville in Australia. They were ‘playing U-2’s’ to get info on Indonesian military moves.
A lovely plane the Albatross and I’d have loved to have seen a ‘water landing’.
I don’t know that forum..is it Air Britain?
DT[/QUOTE
abix is a yahoo group for Air Britain members…..aircraft identity and history rather than current events….not swept by Google and you can’t insert photos as in this forum but there are photo albums linked….the query was about Indonesian AF Albatross # 301 at Changi 1962?

Longshot-I used a wide selection of film-not initially appreciating how important it was to keep the ‘grain’ down. I certainly shouldn’t have gone near HP3 or Tri-X out there but I did shoot some on those early on! Eventually I can see that it’s pretty well FP3 or Plus-X.
Yes I have some good shots of one particular Indonesian Albatross. It arrived at the civil airport Paya Lebar when things were ‘hotting’ up over the Malaysian Federation issue. A USAF Sabreliner called in same time. They then both returned to Changi. I think some US diplomacy was going on, possibly with Malaya involved, to get the politics sorted. Sukarno wasn’t having it though and later we had USNavy photographic SkyWarriors that I do know were overflying Borneo and going on to Townsville in Australia. They were ‘playing U-2’s’ to get info on Indonesian military moves.
A lovely plane the Albatross and I’d have loved to have seen a ‘water landing’.
I don’t know that forum..is it Air Britain?
DT

Longshot- yes that’s the Samoca camera I had.
I was given it by my dad shortly after arriving in Singapore as I guess he could see that he wasn’t going to get his old Agfa camera back now that we lived directly above the aircraft park.

I have an Epson 4870 scanner bought on eBay. I scan the 35mm negs at
2400dpi and leave them as ‘colour negtive film’-which they obviously aren’t!
I hope that keeping all the RGB detail until I print will help with any ‘post production’ I may need to do. Next I need a good printer, another Epson I think.
I do have to spend sometime with each picture in Photoshop, because even the scanning adds dust etc but some of the negs are scratched, unavoidable I imagine after over 45 years. Often there are also uneven ‘sky’s’ from poor development.

Photoshops even saved a few negs from impossibly bad processing marking, so I’m now convinced about ‘digital’!

David

Thanks Postfade I think you had a good little camera in the Samoca! and you knew how to use it!!….were you using FP3 film?….did you get any shots of Indonesian Albatrosses out there?….they’ve just been mentioned on the A-B abix forum

As a ten year old I well remember its arrival at Biggin. As I recall it was half a crown to look over it, entering via the rear door & exiting via the extention ladder out the nose.
My brother took some of the few bits of cine of its flying excursions from Biggin piloted by neil Williams, including it being followed down the runway by the stations antiquated fire engine having landed on 3 engines.
Myford

it was LAVENHAM

Albert Ross,

As far as I am aware NX611 never went to Southend. After Biggin Hill she went to either Lavenham or Lasham, cannot remember which! and from there to RAF Hullavington, where I was lucky enough to work on her and then form part of the ‘crew’ who flew her to Blackpool. If you use the search facility there are a lot of threads concerning this trip on the forum.

Richard J Taylor probably has the best information concerning this time.

James,

Yes the Epson 4870 is a dedicated photo scanner, so has neg carriers for 35mm, 21/4 x 2/14 and 4×5 as well as a set of 35mm slide carriers. I tend to buy ‘last years model’ second-hand so the 4870 is now superseded by a newer one.

I’ve always loved the strong ‘graphic quality’ that a good black and white image has and when I had my 4×5 camera I continued shooting landscapes in monochrome.
In a way I’m glad I shot B&W in Singapore because when I see colour slides from the early 60’s I find them softer looking and usually suffering from considerable fading. The later could be corrected in Photoshop now I guess.
In fact it was only the belief that one day I would build another photo darkroom that made me keep the negs all these years. Alas that didn’t apply to my ‘aircraft spotters file’ that I stupidly through away some years ago. I can still remember the decision…”oh I’ll never need this old relic of my youth”!
DT

The Epsom scanner you use Dave, is is a dedicated slide scanner?

I think he would get a little hoarse if he used that, James?;)

Albert ross mentions that it’s a shame the pics arn’t in colour, to me they are better in B&W and a lot more atmospheric and detailed than any colour pictures of the era.

In this case, that’s probably true as we know the Lanc is white, but in all other cases, colour photos are essential as the definitive reference source.
I have seen too many errors where artists have produced colour profiles and wrongly guessed the colours from b/w photos.

Touched on it in post 5 ‘She was routed New Caledonia, Sydney, then to the UK late ’64 early ’65…’ and in post 8

A change of ownership, servicing, volunteer fundrasing and crew is a bit more significant than a list of stops…

I was actually pointing out the fact that it was donated to HAPS on the other side of the world to them – and HAPS had to figure out how to get it to the UK – which is no small achievement (as it would be now) and is a bit more than ‘was routed’. Credit where due.

Regards,

What hasn’t been mentioned so far is that the French ‘delivered’ the Lanc to HAPS in Australia from Noumeau, New Caledonia – and it was ferried to the UK from Australia – one of a handful of Lancs to make the journey either way.

Touched on it in post 5 ‘She was routed New Caledonia, Sydney, then to the UK late ’64 early ’65…’ and in post 8

Looking forward to the book, should be a good photo reference and history item.

The Epsom scanner you use Dave, is is a dedicated slide scanner?

Albert ross mentions that it’s a shame the pics arn’t in colour, to me they are better in B&W and a lot more atmospheric and detailed than any colour pictures of the era.

Albert,

didn’t she do gate duty at Scampton between Blackpool and East Kirby?

Roger Smith.

Yes, you’re quite correct. Not sure for how long though, but she replaced R5868 when it was moved from the gate down to Hendon.

You’ll all be happy to know that im just completeing a pictoral guide to the history of NX611 which contains many of the photos on this thread (with many thanks to David Taylor). The book should be published a little latter this year and currently stands at 64 pages, so there’s alot of history to NX611 (but also many cracking photos)!

I have a few photos including a couple of the delivery crew from Australia to the UK which are unpublished as well as several that we published in Flightpath here in Australia which I don’t think have been seen in the UK. Drop me a PM if your interested; likewise if you are interested in publicising the book down under.

What hasn’t been mentioned so far is that the French ‘delivered’ the Lanc to HAPS in Australia from Noumeau, New Caledonia – and it was ferried to the UK from Australia – one of a handful of Lancs to make the journey either way.

NX611

Beautiful photos at Changi.

Albert: Actually she was already camouflaged as NX611 at Biggin in May 1967.

Laurence

Albert,

didn’t she do gate duty at Scampton between Blackpool and East Kirby?

Roger Smith.