Canberra?

Cheers Matzos,

I saw the MoD and RAF webpages yesterday after the jets had returned, I did see the Channel 4 news report, and the interview with Deep Fat….

Have it on tape, fingers and toes crossed for the Waddo arrivals day….

Tim

Hello All,

A week to go before the Waddington show, am hoping the 2 PR.9s remain serviceable and return from the deployment.

Hope they turn up together and beat the place up.

Tim

The 2 PR9’s left their deployment base on Thursday 22nd and should have returned home on the 23rd.
The Squadron are planning to take all 3 Canberras to Waddington

Follow the link to see about the end and the last mission of the Canberra Canberra makes its last operational flight

Hello All,

A week to go before the Waddington show, am hoping the 2 PR.9s remain serviceable and return from the deployment.

Hope they turn up together and beat the place up.

Tim

Wold be nice to see one in the air once more before they retire forever.

Keep watching the skies Christiaan! 😉

You might be lucky, know what I mean. 😀

Alan.

First Canberra I saw close up was over 50 years ago.
It collected a seagull in the port engine while doing a low-level bombing exercise along the coast of the Dutch Frisian islands, and made an emergency landing at Leeuwarden air force base. The front compressor stages were lying in the bottom of the nacelle in postage-stamp sized shreds, and there was this overpowering smell of rotting fish.

“My” only other Canberra was the Concorde chase plane at Fairford in the early ’70s.

Wold be nice to see one in the air once more before they retire forever.

Sorry to labour a point, but our Canberras in the RAAF suffered from two temperature extremes for the flight crew.

Due to the tropopause, the cockpits were freezing at high altitude and the Sun beating down made the top half of the pilot sweat whilst his bottom half was covered in hoar frost – beat that!

Eventually the RAAF painted the top half of our Canberras white. That made a difference to us ground crew (refuelling etc) but a navigator once said to me “It keeps the bloody fuel cool!”

One of the wags on our ground crew fried a couple of eggs on the wing one day, just to prove it could be done!

Bri

However, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Thanks for the back-up and stories fatnav, good to hear your cranberrie tales, there are thousands of them out there still untold.

Your tale of the icing inside your little den brought back a memory. Could be that’s why a certain nav came through Gan from the far with a ‘Singpore Dollar Special’ brolly raised in his little cubby hole. He said he was re-stowing it when it auto-deployed and he couldn’t get it furled again. (As these dollar brollys were prone to do – I’m sure you remember them . . and the smell from them after they got wet! :rolleyes: )

.

All I can say is…keep your eyes on the skies, we are doing everything possible to return WK163 to the air for some shows this year and will try our best to keep her flying for as many years as we can…..having said that, if the Government want to give us a bung that would be most welcome 😀

Chris

If the Government were to do that I would hope that it was a suitably large sum to take some of the financial strain off you guys.

i really do think a Canberra should stay airworthy… these amazing birds have done 50 years service… the goverment and RAF should create a Canberra historic flight… that is the least they can do…they have no excuse at the momment as there is still a few in flyable condition…..

All I can say is…keep your eyes on the skies, we are doing everything possible to return WK163 to the air for some shows this year and will try our best to keep her flying for as many years as we can…..having said that, if the Government want to give us a bung that would be most welcome 😀

Chris

i really do think a Canberra should stay airworthy… these amazing birds have done 50 years service… the goverment and RAF should create a Canberra historic flight… that is the least they can do…they have no excuse at the momment as there is still a few in flyable condition…..

Thank you for info do you think BBMF will add any more WWII planes?. I hate are goverment all they want is more foreign workers and loads and loads off new homes and riping are lovely countryside up into roads and homes they dont care about are british Heritage its time we act back and do it now before its to late 😡 😡

James

James

I’m not sure what the BBMF will do to be honest but like I said, i think cost will always be a driving factor now.
From my own experiences recently with our Canberra, it’s been made perfectly clear to me that it’s down to the likes of us now…..Even we have needed tremendous (and most welcome) support from Air Atlantique and previously The Waltons at Bruntingthorpe without either, Wk163 would have been cut up for scrap at Farnborough long ago.
I don’t mind a bit and would put in every second of my spare time if it were needed to keep these flying but at the same time, i think it’s very sad and a total insult to British engineering excellence and British Heritage that the support isn’t there from where it should be.

Regards
Chris

To add to Les B’s comments about heat in the tropics, when operating the PR.9 in those temperatures we used to have a 20 minute rule where if you hadn’t got airborne within 20 minutes of strapping in you aborted because of the potential heat problems.

To give a further insight, I weighed myself before walking out to the aeroplane and then re-weighed immediately on landing having flown a 2 hour low level sortie over Malaya. I had shed 8 lbs, which was evidenced by the salt stains on my coveralls running from armpit to waist. The problem was that internal cooling for the crew only used ambient air, so all you could suck in air that was already very warm. It was great, where possible, to carry out a quick climb to 10,000ft or so just to get a nice cold blast.

You could also have problems at height in the tropics also. On a mission in the Far East we were recovering to Singapore at our usual cruising altitude of 41.000ft. We ran into thick cirrus cloud at that level and as we were crossing the ITZ (where the hot ,moist tropical air meets the much cooler temperate air) there were a considerable number of very large imbedded thunderstorms. We decided to climb above it and eventually levelled at 56,00ft. We could now see clearly and avoid the big thunderheads that were punching up to, at a guess, 80,000ft. However, we were dressed for operating in the tropics, and only had lightweight flying suits on and it got very cold very quickly. The corrected outside air temperature was minus 84 centigrade, and the aircraft heating could not stop about a quarter of an inch of ice forming on the hatch immediately above my head. We got very cold very quickly, and to add insult to injury, I got soaked to the skin when we eventually descended and the ice melted turning into an internal shower.

However, I wouldn’t have missed itv for anything.

She certainly shows the benefit of the TLC which is lavished on her

Hi James…

Regrettably, money always seems to be the top issue with keeping these old machines in the sky. The whole country seems to be profit driven these days and unfortunately, the historically important suffers as a result.
I’m sure the RAF will continue to uphold the BBMF as a matter of national significance but I’m afraid I can’t see them adding extras like the Canberra and incurring the extra cost. They would probably end up being maintained by a civil approved company anyway?

It’s also very difficult to get sponsorship as you need to provide some return for the sponsors, the Sea Vixen being a prime example.
I’m not knocking the Sea Vixen in the slightest and i’m sure that 90% of people would rather see it fly in it’s Red Bull paint scheme than sit and rot, but you can’t fill the skys with ex-military aircraft plastered in Formula One style advertising and expect everyone to go home happy? (can you?)

It’s astounding how big OEM’s will turn their backs on their own heritage when their very small input, could make such a huge difference to what you see at the airshows.
Again it’s down to the few people who give their time freely, to support these wonderful and historically significant machines to keep them aloft, and just as importantly to keep them in pristine static condition, for generations to enjoy.

I urge anyone who has, even for just a minute, thought about volunteering…don’t think about it…go and do it! The future of Britain’s Heritage, be it aviation or otherwise, is in your hands!

(109ster steps off his soapbox and quietly goes off to polish a No10 Mk2 Canberra Starter Cartridge case 😀 )

Thank you for info do you think BBMF will add any more WWII planes?. I hate are goverment all they want is more foreign workers and loads and loads off new homes and riping are lovely countryside up into roads and homes they dont care about are british Heritage its time we act back and do it now before its to late 😡 😡

James

James

Wasn’t it hot under that canopy on Friday and that was just for 5 minutes, god knows what i must be like suited and booted and being in there for a few hours :p Gasp!

The Canberra in the tropics can be a killer in that regard. Sunshields (of various types) were used on the ground but the cockpits could get temps of up to 150F when sitting in the tropical sun. If we had them we used cold air blowers to keep the inside temps down around 70-80f but there really was no relief.

It was bad enough for the ground crew working, as we did, in shorts and sunhat and burning bits of leg or arm or chest on the metal surfaces when servicing the things, but for the crews it was even worse. Within seconds of strapping in a pilot and nav would be bathed in sweat under their flying suits. Recall one pilot who returned early with spots of blood showing on the armpits and groin of his suit. His perspiration had frozen at altitude and cut him like hundreds of little knives when he moved. Piloting a jet! Not an easy job.

.

Hi James…

I urge anyone who has, even for just a minute, thought about volunteering…don’t think about it…go and do it! The future of Britain’s Heritage, be it aviation or otherwise, is in your hands!

(109ster steps off his soapbox and quietly goes off to polish a No10 Mk2 Canberra Starter Cartridge case 😀 )

Its a ‘no brainer!’, eh Chris! :rolleyes:
Seriously the satisfaction that you get ,even from just doing a bit of polishing etc, certainly gives me a good feeling inside!

Wasn’t it hot under that canopy on Friday and that was just for 5 minutes, god knows what i must be like suited and booted and being in there for a few hours :p Gasp!

Cheers, Alan

Could the RAF not rename the BBMF to RAF Memorial Flight and have a Canberra in its flight.Or does it cost too much too fly it if not we have to stick with AA Canberra.

James

Hi James…

Regrettably, money always seems to be the top issue with keeping these old machines in the sky. The whole country seems to be profit driven these days and unfortunately, the historically important suffers as a result.
I’m sure the RAF will continue to uphold the BBMF as a matter of national significance but I’m afraid I can’t see them adding extras like the Canberra and incurring the extra cost. They would probably end up being maintained by a civil approved company anyway?

It’s also very difficult to get sponsorship as you need to provide some return for the sponsors, the Sea Vixen being a prime example.
I’m not knocking the Sea Vixen in the slightest and i’m sure that 90% of people would rather see it fly in it’s Red Bull paint scheme than sit and rot, but you can’t fill the skys with ex-military aircraft plastered in Formula One style advertising and expect everyone to go home happy? (can you?)

It’s astounding how big OEM’s will turn their backs on their own heritage when their very small input, could make such a huge difference to what you see at the airshows.
Again it’s down to the few people who give their time freely, to support these wonderful and historically significant machines to keep them aloft, and just as importantly to keep them in pristine static condition, for generations to enjoy.

I urge anyone who has, even for just a minute, thought about volunteering…don’t think about it…go and do it! The future of Britain’s Heritage, be it aviation or otherwise, is in your hands!

(109ster steps off his soapbox and quietly goes off to polish a No10 Mk2 Canberra Starter Cartridge case 😀 )

Here is the thread from January with my pix (including internals) of that particular Canberra:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=833599#post833599

bri

That Canberra is a PR.3, WF922. It’s one of only two of this type left in the world the other being WE139 at the RAF Museum, Hendon. . . . but the one at MAM is much more accessible. :rolleyes:

You can find a comprehensive history, photos and refurbishment write up here.

I’m pleased you think MAM’s Canberra is top notch, and I know the team of two that look after it will be pleased to hear it as well.

Picture for you until you get yours sorted. 😉

😎

A Fine Canberra

If you want to see an excellent preserved Canberra, visit the Midland Air Museum (MAM) near Coventry UK. They have a 50-year old Canberra that looks like new – it even has working systems! I think they said it was a B2, converted to B6 configuration.

MAM is a fine museum, run by volunteers, and has many other well-kept military aircraft. You can get to the museum by bus from Warwick or Coventry railway stations, using the blue and yellow country bus route 539 (hourly Mon-Sat).

Ask the bus driver to let you off at Baginton Post Office, then it’s a pleasant 10 or 15 minute walk to the museum. No, I’m not connected to this fine outfit: I’ve enjoyed a couple of visits, that’s all!

I have some pics, but can’t work out how to get them into my post.

Bri