Most anyone’s seen of a Whirlwind in many years! Welld one!

A great find. To be a little pedantic, this must be at least mid-1973 as that is the work on the new runway in the background (which I worked on). The Public Inquiry into whether the runway and terminal would go ahead did not finish until 3 February 1972 and the findings were not issued until March 1973. A final objection was over ruled and the preliminary work started in June 1973 with the diversion of the River Almond and the highways order closing the B9080, Eastfield Road and Hallyards Road. A lovely piece of nostalgia though.

Might be worth firing them an email to let them know – they would probably be pleased to have their archive up to date

No it was a yard in Hitchin which recently did the 2 ex SAAF Pumas out of the 6 that we bought which never entered service (as HC.1s) or went into the HC.2 mod line

Tim

And for some reason people are getting very twitchy about airframes going for scrapping – there was almost a D Notice-like omerta on the Pumas on some of the enthuisast sites until after they had been scrapped, and the various Lynx airframes sold recently went on the express instruction that they had to be scrapped immediately.

As one who always beleived this to be possible, be interesting to see what happens – do HHA have a contract in mind (The Buccaneer was always toalked about in connection with the Type 45/Aster development, but never so far used) or is it just a speculative acquisition to give them a supersonic capacity that’s more ‘useable’ than their Su-22.

Poor old St David didn’t get a look in.

That’s because Wales was never a country, just a principality 🙂

From memory one of the ‘Aldon’s is still active in Europe, or was until recently – whilst not much on the web, there is a little out there, but a lot more in books. I’ll have a look when I get home. There was also a little confusion with the identities, with one being given the pre-war registration of one of the other ones when demobbed.

This is a pic from a seires taken for recognition purposes:

The silver one above was one of the post war captured onesin Germany IIRC

I bet he’s up there now laughing at the irony that these comments are appearing on “the FlyPast Forum” Whenever at a BAPC meeting I might mention reading something on “the FlyPast Forum” he gave the impression I had been consorting with the Devil – he played the Luddite part for all it was worth.

That made me laugh, I heard similar from him! But I suspect the ‘Luddite’ was a carefully crafted image.

I knew Steve through modelling, and whilst I only met him a few times, we corresponded through e-mail on and off for several years. He was always one to find the odd or obscure part or photograph, especially related to Harriers.

He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.