Pete Trumanlav;
Inever met any german fighter pilots. I’m going to my group reunion in mid Oct.Je T.
My fist trip to Weiner Neustadt was on Nov 1, 1943. We flew from Tunis, N.Africa. The distance was 1007/900 miles, we were airborne 13 1/2 hours, we were staged to land at Gela, Sicily, spend the night , get enough fuel to enable us to return to base. Subsequent trips were flown from Foggia, Italy.Interesting comment: I slept under the open bomb bay doors on a blanket, in the morning the engines were preflighted. I was out cold, 4 engines running and I’m about 15-20 feet away. and I never heard them.
You must have been tired, even in North Africa it must have been cold at night, however a B-17 runs pretty quietly compared to a Lancaster. My old man had the standard issue blanket during his European campaign with the British Army XXX Corps, I gather that every night he would empty his sten gun into the nearest haystack to clear out the rats and sleep in there, told me it was the only time he used a sten in anger but his last story before he died recently, of a face off with a Tiger tank, made me wonder.
Fantastic stories Jules, very honoured to see you taking the time to answer the questions every afternoon,( BST ).Good luck at the reunion.
Pete TrumanPresumably Nick, the late, great man himself was flying it.
Pete TrumanInteresting.
Wethersfield became active again this week.
5 x C130 on a tactical landing exercise.
Moggy
Moggy
I thought that you may find this article that was published in yesterday’s Braintree and Witham Times very amusing.
JETS SPARK HI-JACK FEARS
Scared residents in Wethersfield have been reporting huge, low flying, jet fighters to the police.
There were fears that they were hijacked planes or a terrorist threat, but police have confirmed that they are part of the M o D’s vital training exercises being carried out last week at their headquarters near Braintree.
A huge C-17 jet transporter and 5 Hercules aircraft have been used in this one-off training programme by the 16th Air Assault Brigade from the Colchester Garrison.
The troops have also been using simulated small arms fire and flares.
The planes, which are the first to land at the headquarters since the US Airforce left the base in 1990 and it was given to the MoD, have come from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and RAF Lyneham in Wilts.
One resident from High Street Green saw one of the planes flying above his house at 8:30pm on Tuesday Sept 13th.
He said:”I thought it was a huge 4 engined plane. It was a beast, it really was a monster.”
Another resident of Potter Street in Sible Hedingham is convinced the aircraft were flying dangerously low.
She said:”I was afraid they were going to take my chimneys off they were so low.”
The MoD apologise to anyone being disturbed by the noise.
A mile away and I didn’t hear a thing !!!!!
I wonder if they dropped the troops off home by landing on the A12.
Pete TrumanI had a quiet moment today, went to cast my eye over a possible barn conversion near Cambridge.
On the way back, I found myself outside the American Cemetery at Madingley. I had to go in to pay my respects, apart from an interesting system of sychronised lawn mowing by the staff and 2 old ladies who mysteriously disappeared, I was all alone.
I do find this an awesome and atmospheric place and noted that 2 of the graves were as recent as 1990, anyone have any info on this.
Just as I found John H Kennedys name on the wall a Harvard flew overhead, I thought how apt considering a lot of the brave souls buried here probably learned to fly in them.
What more can I say.
Pete TrumanI think it was “Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies” (1973). Cliff Robertson was in it. I have not seen it and I do not believe it is available on video / DVD
Written by Steven Speilberg incidentally, but can’t gain much info apart from the fact that he plays a 1920’s stunt pilot, unless it was also a film about the making of a film, obviously about the French side of things, or would it be the Lafayette squadron again.
Have trawled through all of Cliff Robertsons films and can’t find him in a WW1 movie around that time.
Sniffing around the 633 Squadron notes, it says that Robertson was so impressed with the Mosquito, that he bought one of the 3 flyable a/c after filming, is this true and if so what happened to it?
Pete TrumanMy ex-wifes uncle, Ralph Tailford was a flight engineer on Halifaxes during the war, is a member of the YAM and was very involved in this Halifax project, so presumably, knowing his precise memory, he knew which bits went where-ever. At the time of the restoration/reconstruction someone gave me a box full aircraft parts which included what was supposed to have been a bomber turret gunsight. I gave this to Ralph for the aircraft and as far as I know it was used for the project.
I don’t know how many bits were aquired in this way and whether their use was strictly accurate.
Unfortunately divorces mean that, with the best will in the world, you lose touch with people and I never made it to Elvington to have my guided tour of the a/c, however as far as I know Ralph is still going strong.
Pete TrumanMore on “Piece of Cake”…Worth pointing-out that most of the flying footage (if not all) in “Foyle’s War” (current ITV drama series) is culled from the LWT “Piece of Cake” archive. The ground shots using current actors are new footage, but almost all the aerial shots are pulled from the “Piece of Cake” archive. “Piece of Cake” was ground-breaking at the time it was shot, in that it was shot on a film-format for wide-screen TV, which didn’t then exist. In production values, it was light-years ahead of its time.
Always thought it was an underrated production that I loved when it was shown, but critised too heavily by ‘those that know’.
My one surviving episode, videod at the time off the TV is better quality than the North American DVD that my missus bought me for Christmas.
Happened to be in the right time and place to watch the train straffing scene being shot at Wansford on the Nene Valley Railway, the number of retakes considering the few seconds shown on the episode makes me appreciate how expensive it must have been to make.
Pete TrumanSorry for lack of response, but had a heavy day going to London to see Allison Krauss and Union Station aka ‘The Soggy Bottom Boys’, almost thwarted by a massive power cut at the Hammersmith Apollo, but concert eventually went ahead and was as brilliant as I thought it would be.
Adrian
These bits may have been used as fill under the roadway passing bays so probably remain in situ. By coincidence have found out a couple of hours ago from the structural engineer that the big barn remains unsold and the developer wants to split it into 2 units, tried this one before and not acceptable to the planners, waiting for the phone call!
Tcatco
Thanks for the info, remember the 2 hangars at Ridgewell, how did you get in? Rumour had it that they were used for storing Green Goddesses.
Still some fantastic buildings surviving there, including the old concert hall with cloakroom prices stuck on the wall.
Were you living in High Garrett when the 2 F-111’s flew exceedingly low along the Halstead Road heading east, and the night the bus got snowed in at the pub, I helped organize digging out the trapped cars. Did you know John Boatwright at the slaughterhouse and the elephant incident.
Lived at Cherry Tree Cottage, Sunnyfields Road from 1978 to 1987 and bust a gut and bank account restoring it to it’s former glory and more. Came back on the market recently by a chicken farm, place had been wrecked and was in a disgusting condition, complete with abandoned car in what used to be a restored 19th century cottage garden, but at least very cheap, after all that work it makes you wonder about the state of the human race.
Pete TrumanPete,
I am building a web site all about thew Southend Museum what I lack is photos any chance of getting copy of your pics please any others you may have of the museum would also prove invalubale.
The site has been under construction for what seems like the last billion years! had a few disaters where it was virtually ready to go “live” when the hard drive burnt out and everything was lost over 100 page web site! (not all the museum)
Had it all ready to go a few months back had more or less enough cash to get it on line when I had a few emergenct expenses hence no site on line yet.
I am looking at paying for the web space with all up-loading, maintanace, a .com address, POP3 e-mail with 30mb of space £60 per year, if I cant pull the money together I will hijack my brother free blueyonder space as he is never going to use it.
Nick
Somewhere in my storeroom I have about 20,000 slides going back over 40 years covering a variety of topics, sadly I never look at them anymore, probably because there are painful memories in there.
Fortunately they are categorised and I think the Southend ones are in my airshow sequence.
They were taken the day before the pier burnt down, nothing to do with me, but a coincidence considering it was my first visit to the pier and town.
They are probably taken on Kodak slide film with a Zenith E camera, so I think that the quality is reasonable, would you like prints or copies of the slides, I think I photographed every thing that day including the sea fury that was inside the building, what happened to that?
It was also the only time that I got into the flight deck of a Beverley, I even managed to get into the passenger compartment in the tail, but the centre of gravity shifted so I got out pretty quickly.
Happy Days.
Have you a list of what was there at that time, though thinking about it, in my piles of stuff, I’ve probably got a proramme somewhere.
Pete TrumanThe SKE C-130s where part of Exercise Flintlock ’82. I remember it well because I drove along the road from Halstead towards Sible Hedingham and saw them low-level on finals. I went to take a few pictures over the fence and some Americans in civvies from the OSI office on the south side, tried to arrest me! They were from the 7th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, FL and did carry markings but very small ones. It is one of those times I regret never collecting numbers because I would be able to recall exactly which aircraft were involved.
Most impressive reply, thank you, however what exactly was Exercise Flintlock, was it a cover for flying in Sidewinders as Moggy suggested, or just a normal exercise.
Did you manage to get any pictures in the end, there seemed to be about a dozen a/c came in at the time, must have looked interesting coming over the Atlantic.
The event happened in the evening, must have been warm for me to be sitting outside The Henny Swan, but I think it was April/May, probably on a saturday or sunday, there was also a good sunset that evening which made the whole event very surreal, very upset that I didn’t have my trusty Canon with me, and don’t know why I didn’t go home via the airfield as I lived at High Garrett at the time, probably went over the next day and saw nothing as usual.
I was also told at the time by someone who lived near there, that US equipment supplied to the British for use in the Falklands war was being stored at Raydon airfield in Suffolk.
Pete TrumanThere was an odd bit that was obviously one rib from the rear of a flying surface sticking out of a concrete block, and some odd tangled bits that seemed to be part of a control linkage. As you went past the pond going to the farmyard entrance with the barns on the left, they were in some other junk (including a standard Fordson belt pulley wheel) on the edge of the ditch, and the rib was in the end of the ditch I think.
I MAY have a photo – I’ll try to unearth it in the next day or two…
Adrian
(at least one Gray farmed Parsonage, and as the rest were carpenters in the village for centuries there is a good chance that they put up some of those outbuildings. Hence my nosiness!)
Hope you wore a hard hat, could these bits have had anything to do with the hurricane crashes we discussed in a previous thread.
You may be interested to know that when all the various permissions were being obtained for Parsonage Farm, the Essex Fire Officer insisted that the lane was too narrow for fire engine access and subsequently the developer had not only to provide passing places on the lane, but put sprinklers in the barns, so if any of your fathers neighbours up there have a fire, don’t expect the Wethersfield Brigade to come to their rescue, not!
Pete TrumanThanks all for your help. I am away on holiday next week but I will pick up this thread again on my return.
Pete Truman.
There is a possibility that someone at Truman may know something, I will be able to speak to them again in a couple of weeks time. They have someone there who has worked for the Company since Pontious was a pilot and knows much of the Company’s history, so fingers crossed there.
The number of books my collection requires has grown by one. Thanks Thunderbird.
Regards,
kev35
Have done a bit of sniffing about and Truman Aviation only set up at Tollerton in 1963, prior to that work was carried out by Field Aircraft Services which I gather was a part of the Hunting group, they must have been the company involved in maintenance on the Connies, would like to have seen those beasties taking off from there. If you put Tollerton into Google there is a short history of the airfield.
Must check my family tree, have a relative whose into that.
Pete TrumanNot sure whether any of the stencils can be seen any more for flowerpots, but if they can I might take you up!
Did you ever visit Parsonage Barns while they were being worked on? I walked up there once while they were skeletal and on the side of the verge were a couple of random bits of what were obviously aircraft debris. Stupidly I never picked them up because I had nowhere to put them, and my folks have got quite enough of my junk already…
Adrian
Bugger, went up there quite a few times and never spotted anything, where and what were they? Was probably too worried at the time to ensure that the buildings worked.
Several years ago we did a big barn conversion next to the old church at Greenstead-Juxta-Ongar.
The old barns were full of all sorts of rubbish including deer carcases and a set of brand new self sealing B-17 fuel tanks.
My boss at the time carefully removed these and tried to give them away to any interested parties including Duxford, who weren’t interested.
They were then transported to various sites, finally ending up at a barn conversion near Barnston.
One day, a very keen employee had a big clear up and burnt the tanks on a massive bonfire, despite the fact that I was in the site hut at the time, I never found out until it was too late, he was not employed for much longer. The remains are now under the garden.
Pete TrumanI have some slides of this a/c while at the Southend Air Museum in the 70’s, if it’s of any help with the restoration and purchase, I will happily dig them out and send you copies. I also remember clambering about in the hulk at North Weald during a Flypast Fly In, was in a sad state, as I’ve said recently, my brother has pictures of the ‘Lincolnian’ conversions at Tollerton in the 1950’s, will borrow them when I next see him.
Pete TrumanTheir main aircraft appears to be a Gulfstream 5 which has been tracked through various registration changes by way of its c/n. The Guardian had an article on this on Monday and showed a photograph which included a white coloured C-130 rather like the one operated by Lynden Aviation which flies around Europe a lot…
Saw you do a good performance of Mirror Man in the 70’s, how’s Don Van Fleits artwork going, ‘Too many fans and not enough fans’.
Think I’ve seen that C-130 at Stansted to.
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