January 23, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Hi all,
I don’t know if anyone on here will be able to help, but….
On seeing the Vampire T22 for sale on eBay the other day, reminded me of the two Vampire T11’s that I used to work on as part of my BTEC OND in Aeronautical Engineering at Oaklands College in St Albans. Unfortunately, the mists of time have blurred the registration numbers for the aircraft. They had originally come direct from the RAF, had been flown into Hatfield, then the engines had been disabled and airframes dismantled for the road trip to the college site in the middle of St Albans where they lived in the hanger at the back of the engineering block (later to become the area where the builders practised building full-size houses!) for many years. I seem to remember that in my final year the Aeronautical Engineering department was to shut down (or at least reduced in size) as they were disposing of the two aircraft that had been housed for a couple of years, at that point, in a hanger at the back of Astwick Manor (now flats I believe) on the edge of Hatfield Aerodrome.
At the time, I enquired as to what was going to happen to the aircraft and I was told that the aircraft were going to be auctioned off. I think that would have been in the summer of 1996 (I think). The last ‘hanger week’ I spent on these aircraft would have been in spring 1996 (as I finished my OND that summer) when I pretty much single-handedly removed one of the Goblin engines from one of the airframes in preparation of them to be dismantled for removal from the Manor estate. At the time my Dad almost remortgaged the family home to buy the aircraft, but we had nowhere to store them or the funds to pay for rental of a large warehouse (as would have been required).
I was wondering what happened to the aircraft, did they escape the scrap-mans cutting torch, did they get saved by someone? Any information greatly appreciated if anyone knows the fate of these two beautiful aircraft.
Cheers