Only just noticed this resurrected thread, but thought anyone still interested might like to see the ‘nose art’ carried on a pair of Ex-43 Sqdn Hunters that passed through Changi, Singapore on their way to 28 Sqdn Kai Tak. This was July 1962.

‘The Fighting ****’ on the nose of Hunter XG272.

The re-fuelling crew try and work out where to put the AvTur on Hunter XG293 on it’s delivery flight to Kai Tak.

The two Hunters on the pan.
David
ps I love the way this forum has sensored my description of the ‘male chicken’ on the nose of the Hunter!

I was surprised to see that the aeroplane had no propeller at all and assume it was one of the new fangled ‘jets’. Don’t they normally not allow those at the Flying Legends Airshow.
It made a lot of noise and sometimes flames were produced out of it’s rear end. Perhaps that is to frighten the enemy so it doesn’t have to use it’s machine guns so much.

Kev,

Alas no info on my father’s pilot in 36 Sqdn.
The Hawker Horsley’s had to execute a slight dive at the point of dropping their torpedos, and as the water was ‘glassy’ they went too low. The first picture in the sequence showed the plane, with a line drawn through the torpedo to check the angle of drop. The next showed them ‘water skiing’ and the last was the 2 guys swimming to the boat.
The Horsley’s were replaced with the big Vickers Vildebests towards the end of his time at Seletar I think.

My dad’s father had died when he was a boy so he went to live with his grandfather, who was the gamekeeper at large estate at Melton Constable in Norfolk (The Guiness family I think).
He started work doing estate jobs, like making bricks and then did general agricultural jobs around Norfolk, like ‘steam threshing’. However he realised that there was no real future there, so joined the RAF as an airman in 1930.
The rest of the Taylor family always regarded him with perhaps a touch of awe for having the boldness to do step outside their accepted ‘comfort zone’ and join up in the 30’s.
He always laughed and said it was the advertisement that promised ‘Good food, well served in spacious dining halls’ that did it! That has been a family joke phrase ever since.
Overseas postings in the RAF were 4 years in each of two locations I think, hence 4 Singapore and then 4 in Egypt. A longtime to be away.
He told me that during the years in Singapore …he only ever saw ‘one white woman’, a planter’s wife, going upstream…as he was going downstream!

You got a few shillings extra if you learned ‘a language’ in the Forces at that time, so when we returned to Singapore as an RAF family 30 years later, he could still talk quite a lot of Malay. Enough to chat to the Malay Police Auxiliaries at Changi I remember.
David T

I certainly agree that the CGI is poor and looks like a videogame. This must nowadays be blamed on the producers because CGI of a quality almost in destinguishable from real camerawork can be produced.
Apart from outstanding graphic and motion tracking skills the graphic artists producing the CGI need some comprehension of the realistic flight capabilities of the aircraft they are simulating. This could easily be found with the input from aviation experts ….who probably wouldn’t have needed anymore ‘expert’ knowledge than most readers on this forum have.
When ‘The Battle of Britain’ was made in 1968 everything had to be the real filming of planes in flight or with models. However I seem to remember that the producers of that film seemed to understand the capabilities of the aircraft pretty well. Not many aviation films since then have been made with the care that surely is possible.
Let’s hope that this trailer is just offering early CGI and by January the necessary input will have been made to make those sequences much more realistic!
David T

Once again Steve, the camerawork is of awesome quality.
No one else gets it so close and so smooth as you do with that gyro 800mm lens, showing the rest of the aviation video world how to do it. Some shots become like a John Dibbs ‘Legends Calendar’ ….but one that moves, just amazing.
Perhaps the mini/cockpit cameras are something of an ‘acquired taste’ though. Just so wide that the distorted view takes some getting use to.
There are some really great shots in even that small taster, like the zoom in to Big Beautiful Doll in amongst the other P-51s as they pass.
So looking forward to the DVD.
David T.

Here’s one Aussie Sea Venom that I would have checked very carefully before flying.
It’s one from RNAS Melbourne at the Airshow that opened the new Singapore Airport at Paya Lebar in July 1961.

The crowd was allowed to ‘poke and pull’ all over the aircraft in those days.
In fact the Singapore policeman is more interested in me with the camera than what the guys behind are doing to the plane.

I do hope the Aussies get a Sea Venom airworthy again.
One forgets that the Fleet Air Arm pilots and those other navies had pretty bad accident records with jets in the 50’s and it took considerable work to get aids like ‘deck batmen’, angled decks and proper deck landing guidance systems to overcom those losses.

Dave T

more Singapore pics at http://www.focalplanes.co.uk

Really good pics, bomberflight, particularly the beautiful twilight landing shots, with the stunning sky as well.
We won’t see B-17’s landing like that very often in the future I imagine.
Very nicely ‘cleaned up’ as well but might I suggest that you try just a tiny little less ‘sharpening’ to reduce the slight halo effect on some of them, or was that on the Kodachromes?
Many thanks for posting them.