It must have been a very scary time listening to the radio and hearing war declared.
Chamberling had a very foreboding voice as if he knew this could very well be the end.
Still can’t imagine what it would feel like looking up to see hundreds of enemy aircraft filling the sky or listening to
the whistling of the bombs and wondering if you would be next.
When I look around museums all those tanks, guns, bombs, uniforms. Like a made up world that didn’t happen somehow.
Then you look around all the war cemeteries and wonder how it was allowed to happen at all.

Surely floats have been attached to a variety of choppers for years, haven’t they. I suppose the problem is that in some accidents the floats would simply keep the craft afloat but not upright. Even so it’s seems to be a good point.

Does the Puma have floatation bags? Pics of the crashed one show it upside down with floatation bags attached to the wheels.
Not sure if these were attached by divers or part of the aircraft’s ditching mechanism.
It’s probably better to be upside down and floating on the surface than sinking to the bottom, but a lot better to be floating upright.
My car has side, pillar, front, rear airbags. Wouldn’t take a genius to have some form of airbags for a chopper. Similar to the bags on the Apollo capsule.

I’m surprised no company has designed a purpose built helo for offshore work. One that floats upright and is easy to get out of in an emergency.
Seems like all they use are ex military choppers.

The Pilatus PC2 in the background of some of those pictures. The one in Luftwaffe colours. Was that the one on the UK circuit in the 90’s?

It appears to me that Labour voted against action with Syria just to make the Conservatives look bad even though they had privately given the thumbs up.
Not only is that immoral it’s why people don’t trust politicians.
As a life time voter I can honestly say at this moment in time if the general election was tomorrow I couldn’t bring myself to vote for any of them.

As they did in Vietnam.
We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Only history will tell if our decision is right or wrong. I just hope it’s right.

David Learmount is right, of course, but that wouldn’t stop me feeling a little apprehensive flying aboard a Super Puma if I was an oil-rig worker.

You have to admit though that having the main rota detach in flight is a pretty big non survivable failure.
Are there any other helicopter types that have suffered such a fate?