Photo of Hunter spin in Switzerland

Thank you so much, I wonder who owns the original negatives????

If the second picture was taken at Farnborough, I have a picture of the event that I took myself. I will have to look it out and study it.

The second pic was taken at Farnborough; the aircraft was deliberately spun through between 10 – 13 turns from 18000′ to 6000′, finishing the recovery at 1000′. Emmen Airfield is some 1400′ AMSL which he’d forgotten to allow for!

HP111 If I remember correctly the number of rotations was an intentional part of the demonstration, the aircraft was held in the spin until recovery action was initiated at a certain height, it didn’t take that many to recover. When recovery action was taken the ground appeared much closer and the altimeter setting error was realised . The pull up looks pretty close to the ridge to me.

Richard

An interesting pair of pictures. The second one suggests that a Hunter can take six or seven rotations to recover from a spin (not for the faint hearted). The first one shows that he recovers with plenty of speed. It is not possible to see what the ground clearance was however as the pullout was the other side of the ridge.

Here you go.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]257037[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]257038[/ATTACH]

We only remember what’s important :eagerness:

Glad to have been of some assistance! Haven’t seen Baxter’s book for over ten years (my copy got donated to Newark Air Museum shop along with many others when downsizing my house), but I just had a vague idea that I had seen the twin of the image you described therein. Why can I remember ridiculously trivial stuff like that but not what Mrs Meteor said to me five minutes ago?

Awesome, thank you gents

Unbelievable – an enormous pile of old copies of Pilot in no particular order and it was the second one I looked at!

Article by Bill Bedford with the same pic, and another probably the one mentioned by Mike meteor above. Will try and scan it tomorrow.

Edit: the other pic is the one from Raymond Baxter’s book! Found that too…

I can’t find the photo and believe me I am no expert but I seem to recall seeing a photo similar to the one described of Bedford spinning a Hunter at Farnborough. (1961?). Think it might have been in Raymond Baxter’s book?

I think the one in Pilot was better – I’ll see if I can find it, may take a few days though!

I think that’s the bottom half of the photo???? Or it may be the 2nd shot, I seem to remember a shot of twirling smoke lasting several thousand feet?????

spoken about in this wonderful documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weV-9Sj8F5Y

The picture was published in an edition of Flight International;- Was this it? Doesn’t quite look right [ATTACH=CONFIG]256992[/ATTACH]

I remember seeing Bill on 1 of the Hunter docs holding the photo telling the story. Would love to get a copy.

Indeed, but the thrust of the article was display flying safety and I can’t recall if all the contributors were test pilots or not.

Bill Bedford, John Farley … Not so much display pilots as test pilots whose job was to analyse aircraft behaviour in detail.

The one where he is recovering much lower than intended? There was a copy published in Pilot many years ago – probably late 70s or early 80s. The article was about airshow safety to which Bill, John Farley and various other display pilots contributed.