I recall reading that most (all?) of The Blue Max was filmed over/at the Irish Air Corps base, Baldonnel Aerodrome, near Dublin.

Many Air Corps pilots actually piloted some of the planes during filming.

(I must look for the book/reference to this).

Panther.

Re: Iceland,
For such a small country, they have produced a lot of pilots.
I recall a programme on Irish RTE tv (a few years ago) about a food drop mission in Africa during the early 70’s (all organised by one priest!) which continued for several months, during which a lot of aircraft were fired upon as they landed, took off, etc

My point ?
Of all the pilots interviewed about the mission – c.60% were Icelandic !
(which I found very surprising).

The Cook Islands have no airforce or military. Not even a SAR heli !
(They have a few passenger planes and a naval patrol boat).
Their defence is provided by New Zealand.

New Zealand do a great job for such a small force !

Small Navy ?

How about 1 vessel !!!

Cook Islands Patrol Boat ‘Te Kukupa’

I photographed it in Avarua Harbour, Rarotonga, Cook Islands in October 2004.
It was donated by the Australian Govt to the Cook Islands Govt. It is mainly used for fisheries protection and SAR ops.

It has proved to be a major asset to the people of the islands in the collection of illegal fisheries fines – within weeks of it’s arrival it had collected $100,000 in fines, a lot of money in that part of the world !

It is also the only SAR asset for many hundreds of kilometres and has carried out several successful SAR ops to date.

Happy Christmas to all !

Panther.

Hey PhantomII, why don’t you go for a flight in an SF260 ?

The company I mentioned is called ‘Air Combat USA’ (see flex297’s pic above). They do simulated combat flights with their SF260’s.

Panther.