I don’t remember much about the film, but the theme music lingers fondly in the memory. It was probably the only piece of music that had a whistling solo, and was very ‘hummable’. Wish I could get an MP3 of it.

Bri 🙂

Bri,
it IS a CAC Sabre, A94-983.
We passed some of our Sabres to Indonesia and also to the Malaysian AF, the main reason we passed Sabres to Indonesia was to try and improve what were at the time very very strained relations between Australia and Indonesia, as we had more or less come to the brink of war during the 1960’s.

It also benefitted the RAAF as they knew that should it have come to a shooting match again during the Sabre’s service with the TNI-AU that we would have the superior fighter in the form of the Mirage III.

I know about the strained relations, as I was involved, serving in RAAF Darwin at the time! Not a lot of people know this, but one week we had the biggest exercise ever, with virtually every aircraft the RAAF had visiting. Canberras, Sabres, Hercs, Dakotas the lot.

The ‘enemy’ leader (!) transitted the base while it was on. Then, as soon as he left, all the planes were flown back to base. I understand he was given a tour of the bases after he left us. Presumably all this was to make him think we had a much larger air force!

Incidentally, it was touch and go whether the CAC Sabres would make it to Darwin. We were told that if there was a more than 5 knot headwind, they would have to turn back. As it was, they landed with only kerosene fumes in the tanks and some had to be towed off the runway.

I was doing turn-around servicing on the Hercs, and spent so much time working, fell asleep standing up when entering fuel states!

Bri 🙂

PS: I worked on A84-232 on 2 Squadron and at 3AD. I remember it well!

The ‘flying bicycle’ was a feature every year at the marvellous Naval Air Shows held at HMS Daedalus, Lee on Solent. A rating was carried under a helicopter on a bike fitted with a stabilising fin.

Something else they did was to air-drop a car onto the runway, and it ended up about one foot thick!

I have a collection of photos from those shows, but have never figured out how to include pics on this forum.

Bri 🙂

Have you tried Amazon and Ebay? I got a set of Concorde Maintenance Manuals on CD from Ebay.

Bri 🙂

As someone who WAS there, enduring a great deal of bombing in London as a boy, I know that these people who criticise everything done by the British in World War II do so out of ignorance. Ergo: they weren’t there.

They have also been brainwashed by people in the media who present only the facts they want to present. Anyone who knows me know what I think of people in the media!

Bri 🙂