Can I borrow the Tardis for a day?

Over the holiday I had a loan of a few ‘Aeroplane’ magazines of 1953/4. The advertising pages had the most incredible offers. The names of the past leapt off the pages. De Havillands, Blackburn, A V Roe, Hawkers Napier, English Electric. all had adverts for every kind of Drawing office job, even Chief Designers (of missiles!)
The classified ads however had the most mouth watering offers.
From May 1953 edition.
W.S Shackleton of Piccadilly had DH Rapides from £1,250-£2,500
A Gloster Gladiator with rebuilt engine for £1,000.
DH Tiger Moths from £300-£495
Miles Migisters from £300-£550
An Avro York, airways equipped for 6,500.
Aviation Services were selling B.E.A s Viking 1b fleet. The airlines fleet list showed that B.E.A had 41 Vikings and 49 DC3s in service.
Central Aeronautical Bureau offered 18 Seafire XV for £5000 each fully operational!
And a ‘Twin Beech’ with full CofA for £12,000.
(To put these prices in perspective though, when I started work in 1960 the average worker in the factory I worked in was earning about £15 per week!)

Silver City Airways started a Gatwick to Le Touquet service using Bristol Freighter Mk 32
They embarked 3 ‘export Austin 7 cars’ and 20 passengers and an hour later they were in France. They expected to take 6,000 passengers a year on twice daily flights for £7. 10s return. They had options on 3 Blackburn Universal Freighters (Beverly’s)

Sir Frederick Handly Page enthused about the new H P 97 airliner, 150 seats using the Victor’s wing design.
Saunders Roe advertised the Princess Flying boat and the tiny Skeeter helicopter as ‘neither need concrete runways!

The Canberra took the altitude record to 63,668 feet and the magazine was full of adverts for every part maker to claim their ‘part’ in the effort.
To travel back in time. 🙂
To end on a sad note in the November 1954 edition. The Chinese government admitted that they had shot down a Cathy Pacific DC4 with the loss of 10 of the 18 on board and would pay compensation.

mmitch.