By coincidence I was sorting out some boxes the other day and came across the first ever edition of Flypast, May/June 1981.
The first article following Mike Twites editorial is a report on the crash, including 2 horrific photographs that I’m sure they wouldn’t put in the magazine today.
One shows the plane plunging inverted with contrails streaming off the wings, the other shows the resultant fireball, rather more than a wisp of smoke.
The pictures are attributed to Ron Wickers, he must have had nerves of steel to take those, anyone know him.

PETER TRUEMAN
I saw the Harvard yesterday it was going to Duxford (N4109C)
The SA341 this afternoon was a civilian one not millitry,have not seen any of the Apache`s ,but you must get a better view from Bocking,i`m only a mile up the road from you.
G-ANPK

Nice to hear from a local.
I live between Bradford St and The Fairview estate, backing on to the Blackwater and very pleasant it is too.
My garden faces east and the Apaches come in from the direction of High Garrett, head straight for me, then turn over Braintree college and head towards Towerlands, usually very slowly. If they are going in the other direction, they seem to be following the Braintree by-pass until heading off over High Garrett. I reckon we saw about half a dozen yesterday as we were landscaping the garden most of the time.
A couple of weeks ago a Chinook appeared from the north but when he was almost over the house, he banked very sharply over to the east and then followed the by-pass in the other direction.
I saw the Harvard the other day, he came right over the house, what was interesting was that shortly afterwards we could hear a military jet flying low and fast somewhere over to the east, I didn’t know that, about from the helicopters, that this area was a low flying zone, or could it been a heritage jet from North Weald.
Many years ago, when I lived at High Garrett, I was in the garden, heard a noise and looked up to see 2 F111’s flying VERY close and fast about 200ft above Halstead road, heading east, I bet there were a few brown trousers amongst the road users that day.

In case any one else happened to be there and can can confirm this, I specifically remember being at an airshow in the late 50’s, probably Cottesmore BoB day and 4 THUM flight Mosquitos flew over in formation.
As I recall, they were silver finish with yellow bands, what I don’t understand is that my brother never took a photo of this event, though we were probably obsessed with the latest American hardware at the time.

In the mean time, just watched The Departed. Great movie! I had been waiting a long time to see it and I wasn’t disappointed. Leonardo gave the performance of a lifetime as did the rest of the cast, especially Jack Nicholson who reminded me why he is such a great actor. Just an all around brilliant movie.

I saw The Departed last week, we loved it, but didn’t think it was as good as Goodfellas. I was surprised to see the great Ray Winstone in the film, he’s fantastic until it comes to different accents, they should have left him to be himself, what difference would it have made, well it would, I think he would have complimented Nicholson far more, because Ray would have felt more comfortable.

Shall I do a name drop here, I designed Ray’s garage and swimming pool, what a fantastic bloke he is in real life.
Top moment we had was a mobile conversation with him on the set of Cold Mountain, he was sitting in make up with Nichole Kidman, and was excited at the prospect of having to act with her, with possibly a snog thrown in, not, lovely bloke and so is his family, he deserves all the success he gets.
Sexy Beast is one of my all time faves, watch it if you haven’t.

Nice one, was that at a recent Legends that I missed.
It would be possible to have 6 Hurricanes at the BBMF anniversary show, even if they didn’t fly, it would be most impressive to have them lined up, I know a couple of Hungarians, apart from me, who would help to push them into place.

The good old HST is now over 30 years old and currently being refurbished and re-engined, but where is it’s replacement. If you think about it, when HST came out, there was nothing in passenger or loco stock surviving from 30 years before, except perhaps the lovely old teak LNER buffet car that I used to travel in to Ely on the Harwich boat train in the 70’s.
At one time the HST was being considered by Amtrak for high speed use between LA and San Francisco but nothing came of it.
I read that 1000 new carriages are to be provided for the rail network to help with overcrowding, but what will be used to pull them, 50 year old diesels?
I’m sure that the European/North American/Japanese rail industries will sell us a solution as usual.

Whats the largest number of Hurricanes that have flown together since the 50’s, I recall at Legends a few years ago, three were up and the BBMF flew in behind them so, in theory 4 were sort of together, would be nice if they could be all together at the BBMF do at DX in May, any chance.

Loved it, but what happened to Darth Vadors cloak, The Force was not strong enough in this one.