Pete TrumanThere’s also Sputnik 1, launched on October 4 1957. Even though I was just 5at the time, I twiddled the family radio in the hope of picking up the bleeps from above. The Liverpool Echo carried the memorable headline “Russian satellite is 500 miles above Crosby” – nothing like getting the local angle!
William
I remember that, my old man did the same thing and fiddled with the radio when it flew over Nottingham, we had no light pollution in those days, only gas lamps and those wierd, dainty electric street lights with the square cut glass reflectors, so you got a good view of it passing over.
As I mentioned earlier 1957 was the launch of Hornby Dublo’s Bristol Castle, a ground breaking piece of model engineering, it only flew however when it fell off the layout that we had mounted on a base board, still works though.
Pete TrumanSeems of a waste of life of pilots from both sides just to deliever a leg, I hope he appreciated it, presumably those Bf 109’s weren’t shot down by Blenhiems, couldn’t a more peaceful solution have been engineered, like waiting for a strong northerly wind and hanging it from a barrage ballooon with Red Cross markings perhaps, now that would have been a sight, it could have gone all the way to Russia and won a prize for the sender.
Pete TrumanInteresting to see a Swastika on the tail of the JU88, I thought that this symbol was banned in Germany, not that I’m against it, for authenticities sake, it should be on there.
Is the Me110 original, it looks a bit too tidy to be completely real.
Pete TrumanAnyone in the Tornado in North London or see it?
James
Was it an F3 or a GR4.
Pete TrumanAnyone in the Tornado in North London or see it?
James
Was it an F3 or a GR4.
Pete TrumanNice one Mk12, I always thought it was Ben Afflick, how many Japanese a/c were brought down that day in air combat, couldn’t have been too many and the odds must have been daunting for the pilots that managed to get in the air.
I often wonder what might have happened had the Japanese carrier fleet been detected and dealt with by a combination of US naval power and aircraft, it would surely have curtailed any thoughts of attacking Singapore, Hong Kong etc.
Were any British personel, in what ever role, involved at Pearl.
Pete TrumanIt seems to be happening every night, we can’t get a good nights sleep, as of this moment it’s horrendous again, I’m looking out the window at the poor sods coming into Stansted Airport, glad I’m on the ground, only just.
Anyone have any good memories of the famous storm of October 87.
We were more or less camping out in a pair of semi derelict cottages we had just bought, I remember waking up at about 4 in the morning and wondering what the hell was going on, I tried to go outside but it was too dangerous, our only damage was 4 missing slates.
Our village was cut off without power for 4 days, all the roads were blocked by fallen trees and power lines.
It was interesting that the Yanks came down from Wethersfield Base to help out but seemed to know the date and time that the power would come on, spot on too, very wierd.
I was able to rig up a lighting and 12v power supply from my car, even managed to run a TV so we were quite comfy, bloody hell, as I am writing this it’s now started thundering and lightning, the dogs are crapping themselves, whats happening?
Pete TrumanIt seems to be happening every night, we can’t get a good nights sleep, as of this moment it’s horrendous again, I’m looking out the window at the poor sods coming into Stansted Airport, glad I’m on the ground, only just.
Anyone have any good memories of the famous storm of October 87.
We were more or less camping out in a pair of semi derelict cottages we had just bought, I remember waking up at about 4 in the morning and wondering what the hell was going on, I tried to go outside but it was too dangerous, our only damage was 4 missing slates.
Our village was cut off without power for 4 days, all the roads were blocked by fallen trees and power lines.
It was interesting that the Yanks came down from Wethersfield Base to help out but seemed to know the date and time that the power would come on, spot on too, very wierd.
I was able to rig up a lighting and 12v power supply from my car, even managed to run a TV so we were quite comfy, bloody hell, as I am writing this it’s now started thundering and lightning, the dogs are crapping themselves, whats happening?
Pete TrumanMy first and last visit to a Syerston Airshow, getting a cowboy outfit for my 7th birthday including twin leather holsters for my Colt 45 cap guns, made by Lone Star, one was silver and one gold, I even had a leather pouch to put the caps in.The backside on the trousers split very quickly and I never wore the damn thing in public anyway, I looked like Alan Ladd in Shane except probably taller, sorry Alan, probably one of the best cowboy films ever made. Goodbye Shane!!!
We also got the Hornby Dublo ‘Bristol Castle’ for Xmas that year as well, which I’ve still got and I think it was the year of my first trip to Grantham trainspotting.
Does this count.
Went to Southsea for my hols that year and saw the Vanguard, the last Battleship, moored up at Portsmouth, I also definately remember watching a Sunderland fly along the coast and remember seeing the Princess flying boats coccooned off Calshott following a trip by boat to Southampton Docks.
Pete TrumanI believe it was Bulwark that they were looking for Gannets for… some were trying to re-commission her for the Falklands… which would have been quite a job, considering:
1. had been decommissioned April 1981
2. had been towed to the scrapper, but work had not yet started (finally started April 1984)
3. her catapults had been removed in 1958-1960 when she had been converted to a commando carrier
and
4. she had had one boiler room gutted by a fire 15 March 1980, and this had not been repaired, followed by a major fire which damaged the forward hangar and many mess decks 9 November 1980.
Several months after the Falklands conflict, October 82, a few days after the Mary Rose was raised, we took a trip along the south coast and ended up at Portsmouth. The Bulwark and Tiger were definately still anchored up with the reserve fleet then, as we persuaded one of the tour boats to take us round the fleet as it was getting dark and what an experience that was.
The dockyard was full of activity with ships being repaired in drydocks under floodlights, it was incredible, I have some stunning slides of the events, but I do recall sailing round the Bulwark in the dark, not officially allowed but an extra fiver did the trick.
Pete TrumanJDK
I can’t see that the Merchant Marine does to well either, I’ve been wracking my brains to think of preserved merchant ships, I know we have the lovely paddle steamer and it’s stable mate that do summer cruises around the British coast and amazing they look too, but all preserved ships, naval or otherwise are short on the ground in this country.
I remember only a few years ago it was possible to wander round the coast and creeks of Essex and see loads of old MTB’s moored up as houseboats, including one next to the bridge at Maldon, but they all seem to have dissappeared recently, plywood hulls become unstable no doubt.
I agree with you about the Stranraer, lovely seaplane, would have liked to have seen one of those launched off the Warspite, was the experiment ever tried.
If I lived closer to Southampton, I would definately volounteer to help with the Walrus project, a unique a/c, I didn’t realise that there was a problem with this.
Arm Waver: Surely when the Illustrious class was designed the SHAR was only a distant idea, I seem to remember from the controversy at the time that they really were only designed for helicopter operations.
Just as an aside, I never saw a British carrier with it’s compliment of a/c on board, however I was lucky enough to see the USS Enterprise at Portsmouth in 69 on it’s way back from Vietnam, well tooled up, and I saw the JFK off the coast of Normandy in 94 launch Tomcats, Prowlers, F-18’s for the D-Day flypast.
Pete TrumanI also can’t believe it’s a year since the great man left us, strangely enough, I didn’t manage to get to any airshows last season, so in a sense, I haven’t confronted the void that he has left, my last airshow was the DX Autumn show 2005 and he flew in that, the last performance I believe.
Pete TrumanGood luck with your sons trip, and don’t make my mistake, I think I treated my son to what must be considered as overkill, ie I used to take him to every airshow and museum going, which the poor kid had to go through as I was a single parent, though I always let him take some mates along.
Inevitably all he wanted to do was go on the bouncy castle or snake slide, always at an innapropriate, ( for me ), moment.
He managed to develop the ability to sniff out any adventure playground or amusements at any airshow, quite amusing really when you look back.
His greatest moment was when we managed to get into a practice session for North Weald, he was banned from school for a week having had measles and we had the whole flightline to ourselves and sat in the grand stand on our own, the resulting practice session was quite hair raising, which he loved.
Silly sod is now a 6ft 3, 21 year old student at Notty Uni and a lovely bloke, bet he never goes to another airshow till he has kids of his own.
Pete Trumanif i remember correctly (i look forward to corrections if im wrong) Invincible & Hermes and the other carriers of their type werent actually meant to be aircraft carriers in the normal sense, they were meant to be only carrying helicopters and that clever bloke with the beard (ok that covers most of the RN) proved just before the Falklands that it was possible to land a Harrier on the deck and then the rest is history. I was only 6 at the time so the old hard drive is a bit u/s and should have been BLR’d years ago and i wasnt happy with with the demise of proper carriers doing away with Buccs & Phantoms & Gannets (ok RAF got the lot bar the Gannets) Bex
Invincible, Illustrious and Ark Royal are of the same class and were indeed only originally designed to carry helicopters. Hermes was completley different and older, if you Google about there are some interesting pictures taken in the 60’s when it seems to have a full compliment of Gannets, Sea Vixens, Scimitars and even what look like Buccs on one picture.
It was converted to a helicopter carrier in 73.
I would be interested to know whether any thought was given to taking off the ski ramp and putting back the steam catapults before it set out for the Falklands, though I know that time was of the essence.
I can imagine the look on the faces of RAF pilots when being sent off to learn how land and take off their precious Buccs and Phantoms from a carrier, but it had been done before, interesting scenario though.
I think that when I was at college in Portsmouth in 69/70 I watched the sister ship of Hermes, Centaur, come into port for the last time flying it’s paying off pennant, the whole crew lining the deck, very moving sight, and captured on some slides somewhere.
I may have been a revolting student at that time but living in Portsmouth created my great interest in warships, especially the carriers, we never went to the Union bar for lunch, always the Still and West pub at the Sally Point, I remember being late for afternoon lectures once because I was waiting for the old Ark Royal to leave port, and what a sight that was, I seem to remember she was off for sea trials following a refit, and happened to be leaving port as the QE2 was arriving for Southampton. We waited till the two passed in the Solent, what a sight that was, it was surprising how much bigger the QE2 appeared to be compared to the Ark, which had just towered over us on passing the pub.
Pete TrumanI’ve tried to follow this debate, but unfortunately lost the will to live as at times it has become vitriolic. From a personal point of view, I have very little interest in or time for religion. How anyone can base their beliefs on a series of books that were written several thousand years ago, in many cases several years after the events took place and have gone through various stages of translation is beyond me. To me it’s all voodoo and all I can glean from it is that from where I stand and from what I have read, religion has spawned many of the bloodiest wars of the past 1000 years.
60+ years ago the last “big” war was fought to give people the right to self determination and to the greater extent those of us in Europe have that. This encompasses religious and political beliefs, sexual orientation etc… As a result of the bloodshed by those men from an eclectic mix of creeds and races, none of us has a right to impose their beliefs upon anyone else, none of us has a right to tell our neighbour how they should live their lives, none of us has a right to enforce the rest to vote a certain way, none of us has a right to suppress another group of human beings for whatever reason, I could go on, I have the right to do so and no one is going to take that right away.
I admire those of you with the convictions you have in your various faiths, however through the freedoms bestowed upon me by those men who now lie in a foreign field, I beg to differ and say your theories and religious beliefs are misguided and in many cases wrong. Rant over.
You will have to change your mind when Hookies green flag is flying over Downing Street, well not really, you will probably be kipping in a hedge and getting heavy with RPG’s against our removal of those rights, but don’t worry, we will have snuffed it by then and inadvertantly know the answer to life, the universe and everything, not, just keep thinking 42.
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