Great Hawker Kestrel FGA.1 vid on YouTube

Interesting Al…I was at Dunsfold 1984 until the bitter end !!
Lovely place to work,I made it into the flight shed in 86 (Halton Brat mafia 😉 )
rgds baz

My sis and her husband both loved working there – she was a secretary, he a Harrier leccy, but hated the management/worker divide.
From what they told me, the management were too interested in staging lavish junkets for potential foreign buyers, while the folk actually doing the graft were treated like second-class citizens, almost like building jets was the last thing they did.
Great photo of the P.1127 Baz – what a beautiful design. What I’d give to restore one of those…:rolleyes:

Almost a kestrel 😉
Pic taken amost in the same posn as the John Farley video above…ie in the east end of Dunsfold Flight Shed

pic taken circa 2000

Gread vids Baz – my sister and her husband both worked at Dunsfold for a time.
I find it astonishing that there is no place for the Harrier in UK military aviation…

Interesting Al…I was at Dunsfold 1984 until the bitter end !!
Lovely place to work,I made it into the flight shed in 86 (Halton Brat mafia 😉 )

Yes the Harriers were let down by political manoevering and also by Wastospace wasting time/money on the totally unneccessary facility at cottesmore,but they had made a political closure of Dunsfold when in reality we could have supported the Harriers better without the ‘pulseline’ bullshirt :rolleyes: at cottesmore and also we were much more efficient/harrier experienced than Warton…it was like stepping back 30 years going into warton – good bunch of lads on the shopfloor but the work processes/procedures were fairly archaic LOL !!

rgds baz

Kestrel vid.

That was nice. The music was tasteful too. Hadn’t realised the early Pegasus engines were cartridge started.

Al’s story is almost as good as the vid:D

Anon.

Original vid is apparently available on a DVD, not found the name yet.

Gread vids Baz – my sister and her husband both worked at Dunsfold for a time.
I find it astonishing that there is no place for the Harrier in UK military aviation…

Lovely footage Al,I really enjoyed it…

Here is some kestrel footage shot at Dunsfold,inc a little in cockpit ‘action’,not as good quality as yours but interesting anyway…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td8uH301_M4

Also here is a vid of John Farley explaining how Harrier VSTOL works,it is taken in the Flight Shed at Dunsfold (western rebuilt T2)[AKA Top Gear set now]. A/C is a Dunsfold based GR5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfbHMxnlbfI&feature=related

It was a fantastic experience even for us – amazing we weren’t caught!
Can you guess who ‘dim’ was?;)

Yes, ‘dim’ and I had a similar adventure at RNAS Lossie. We made our way from the fire dump to a hanger full of Hunters, by way of a LOX hut half way in between the bushes and the hanger. Whilst hiding behind the hut we were spotted by a naval rating, who came over and asked us what we were doing. I said, ‘We came to look at the aeroplanes’. To our amazement he walked off, saying, ‘Well, don’t get caught’. We had a good nose around the hangar and obtained some Hunter T8 pilots notes. I remember our ATC officer was mortified when we brought them along and made us post them back to Lossie.

Dim went on to pursue a notably unsuccessful criminal career.

You visited twice if I recall correctly. On the occasion I went, I ended up chest deep in smelly, freezing cold goo after failing to leap the canal.
It was well worth it though.

It was a fantastic experience even for us – amazing we weren’t caught!
Can you guess who ‘dim’ was?;)

Excellent film, and such a beautiful elegant aircraft. Such a shame that the replacement is none of the above!!!

Very different seeing the manually controlled take-offs and landings as opposed to any recent videos of the Harrier with much more integrated and computer controlled take-offs and landings. That must have been an exciting ride!

I agree – may be our navy should get some, they must work really well of a ship, say an aircraft carrier…. Oh wait, we don’t have any of them either…….:):mad:

The film actually reminded me of when 1 Sqn Harrier GR.1s operated from the woods on the periphery of RAF Milltown in the very early 1970s.
Being an aviation-mad local schoolboy, me and some mates snuck in to have a look on a Sunday morning, and it was obvious there had been one hell of a party the night before.
An early-warning trip wire had been put up around the woods, with beer cans dangling which should have alerted the ‘groundies’ who were soundly snoring in their tents.
Once safely over the wire, we took photos of ourselves sitting in the Harriers cockpits, and clambered all over the aircraft, which were covered in plastic cammo netting.
We also found an old farm hut which was being used as an armoury, full of Sneb rocket pods, 30mm ammo, instruction manuals, and spares.
It’s simply outrageous when I think about it now, but one dim pal even had a dump right in the middle of the red ‘X’s on top of a wing. Every safety pin was pulled out of the parked armed aircraft, and together with Sneb rubber gaskets and manuals were taken home to sell or swap at school the next day.
I often wonder what the servicemen thought when they realised so much was missing, how many people we got into trouble, and horrified at the lives we risked.
Strange, we don’t get a mention in this article about the detachment though. Today’s kids seem like little angels….
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1972/1972%20-%201202.html

You visited twice if I recall correctly. On the occasion I went, I ended up chest deep in smelly, freezing cold goo after failing to leap the canal.

It was well worth it though.

The film actually reminded me of when 1 Sqn Harrier GR.1s operated from the woods on the periphery of RAF Milltown in the very early 1970s.
Being an aviation-mad local schoolboy, me and some mates snuck in to have a look on a Sunday morning, and it was obvious there had been one hell of a party the night before.
An early-warning trip wire had been put up around the woods, with beer cans dangling which should have alerted the ‘groundies’ who were soundly snoring in their tents.
Once safely over the wire, we took photos of ourselves sitting in the Harriers cockpits, and clambered all over the aircraft, which were covered in plastic cammo netting.
We also found an old farm hut which was being used as an armoury, full of Sneb rocket pods, 30mm ammo, instruction manuals, and spares.
It’s simply outrageous when I think about it now, but one dim pal even had a dump right in the middle of the red ‘X’s on top of a wing. Every safety pin was pulled out of the parked armed aircraft, and together with Sneb rubber gaskets and manuals were taken home to sell or swap at school the next day.
I often wonder what the servicemen thought when they realised so much was missing, how many people we got into trouble, and horrified at the lives we risked.
Strange, we don’t get a mention in this article about the detachment though. Today’s kids seem like little angels….
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1972/1972%20-%201202.html

Kestrel

What a great machine i think the Navy should use them !!!

West Raynham, then Bircham Newton, then I presume in the Stanford Training Area, with the closing scenes back at Raynham.

Yes, definitely West Raynham, the Tripartite Kestrel Evaluation Squadron operated at the Central Fighter Establishment there, after working up at Dunsfold, this would date the film Feb – Nov 1965.
They also used a small forward operating area in a Norfolk woods somewhere.

Great film, and very well edited and put together, In my mind two machines that have come to symbolise how truely great this country was when it came to engineering in the 1960s, the Hawker P.1127/Kestrel/Harrier, and Concorde.

Excellent Film!

I am not sure but it looks like it was filmed at West Raynham.

Superb video, thanks for posting!

Super stuff! Never seen footage of Harriers or anything else operating from a tiny woodland, must have made quite a sales video!

I love the mix of a very wartime looking base with the high tech Kestrel, shows how quickly technology was moving! What exciting times they must have been
Matt

AND it’s colour. Watching a couple taxing on the grass, they bounce around like models and don’t even look real! Great find and made my afternoon.