Weren’t there a number of significant airframes lost in a fire in Uruguay about 20 years ago?

Surprised to find it as the pilot attempted to bale out…

Don’t forget that the ‘cobras have a pair of doors with the same mechanism for each. If he tried to bale out he would probably have jettisoned one of the doors, but not both.

I think that’s the whole point. It was an attraction for Legends only, the show organisers brought it over and if you want to see it you have to go to their show. As for the crew, they come over every year now regardless.

And yes, the first time in Britain. The only other one in Europe was in Spain. The Spanish bought a single demonstrator but decided to buy the Hawker Fury instead, however when the Civil War broke out they fitted armament to it and used it in combat until it was shot down.

Duxford is suffering with “Spitfire” mania ,there are other aircraft that deserve just as much recognition.

I quite agree, but it brings the punters in through the gate in droves, which is precisely why they do it. Stand by for even more of the same with the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain next year!

Here we go again!

Nobody has claimed that it will be operated as a civilian-registered aircraft under the auspices of the CAA, but as a contracted MoD aircraft with a military serial, just as HHA’s Hunters, for example, do at the moment.

Personally I find it easiest just to fork out a few quid each year for Steve Connor’s consistently excellent DVD of the event, rather than try to shoot the type of endless, rather tedious and amateurish single vantage-point videos that are plastered all over the web shortly afterwards.

I gave up any idea of trying to get anywhere close to the crowdline at the weekend as early as Friday afternoon, when I was sworn at by an abusive videographer who seemed to think that he ‘owned’ the 6 feet of fenceline on either side of where he was standing. The trouble with this particular event is that it attracts too many fanatics and obsessives. One even went as far as having a T-shirt printed up with a warning in large red letters across his back, warning others to allow him freedom to swing his camera around to either side from his little cordoned-off fiefdom. Every inch of crowdline was taken up with windbreaks, tents, roped-off areas and chairs tie-wrapped to the fence within half an hour of the gates opening. Shamefully the IWM have decided to take the line of least resistance and put out a wishy-washy statement ‘prohibiting’ such activity, yet openly admit they will do nothing whatever to actually enforce it.