Was it the same APS20 radar that went into the AEW2 Shacks then?

I love the fact the the WV-2 above has both camouflage and day-glo!

Here’s the one that arrived with a similar entourage of a Herc and a C-54 in May 62 when Aurora 7 with Scott Carpenter did his ‘earth orbit’.

I later saw pics of C-130’s dropping navy divers to the splashdown Mercury capsule and assume that was what the accompanying Hercs were about.

This WV-2 doesn’t have the smaller radomes at the rear that the first plane has.
There was a 30 odd man crew on these things. The RAF Changi Transit Hotel must have been buzzing when they all tumbled in from their night out in Singapore City!
Amazing to think that we hadn’t yet seen a man on the moon when I photographed these planes.
DT

I think the advances in camera technology are fantastic. However I sometimes find aircraft pictures, particularly flying pic, as just too crisp and perfectly focused and rather lacking in the necessary ‘blur’ that the eye perceives when viewing motion. In the 60’s I had the most difficulty with capturing aircraft in flight because of the elements of both exposure and motion. These things are so easily improved on nowadays and I would be tempted to dive into Photoshop and add in some blur I think!

It would however have been great to have got a shot like this one of a Meteor target tug streaming it’s drogue rather crisper. Also a fixed standard lens on a 35mm camera was all I could afford then.

I love the fact that the Singapore locals on the road at the end of the runway ignore this Shackleton doing a very low run and don’t mind the fact that they are blurred! The camera only had 1/300 sec fastest speed, so accurate panning was necessary.

I was also struggling with the vagaries of film development in a tropical country. I finally bought a Durst enlarger and started doing all the processing including the development myself and eventually improved the results.
Here’s a shot of one of the of the last of the scheduled ‘big prop’ flights, a Qantas Super Connie in 1961. The new Qantas 707-138’s arrived within a few weeks.

This could have been a truly beautiful picture if the film grain wasn’t so pronounced. Caused by the incorrect development it received in ‘Georges Photo’ in Changi village!

No grain problem in this night shot of an RAF Brit though.

David Taylor.

Thanks for the replies guys, the dates when the Hermes Scimitars were in at Tengah is interesting. We also got some Hermes Wessex in at Changi, at that time, as I can see I have pics of those.
Pleased to find out about XP229 and the damage details are fascinating too..so much info around if only I can ‘mine it all out’!
I do see the bottom of the port finlet looking damaged, noticeable in both pics.

Compare it with this one for instance:

Sorry that’s a smaller pic, can’t access a bigger res one, I’m at work at the moment (call this work!)
I had wondered what the ‘C’ on the mid fuselage of the Gannets was and had wondered if a graffiti artist from Centaur had been busy. Now I know it’s ‘C’ Flight.

I can now see from my pics that Ark doesn’t have any Sea Vixens on board at this time, just Scimitars.
Of the Scimitar, an American is reported as remarking, in a Fleet Air Arm book I have, that ‘Only the British could design a plane so big and powerful and not make it supersonic’!
I really loved the Sea Vixens, I’ll upload some better pics of those and Scimitars from Ark sometime.
Regarding a ‘book’. It’s an interesting thought. I have over a thousand pics from that era, including loads showing the change over from ‘big props’ to jets at Paya Lebar (Singapore’s airport before Changi was converted).
Perhaps therefore a book would be a good way to display them.
DT

Since we started on Target Tugs and progressed to Canberras…I have to post a couple of pictures of Canberras going off to meet their fates at Woomera, probably as lunch for ‘Bloodhound’s.
Presumably what Canberra, still in ‘front line service’, offered over say a radio controlled Meteor or Jindivinks was great altitude capability. At that time in the early 60’s we still were trying to protect from high flying Russian bombers and I assume the Bloodhound missiles needed proving up there.

So sad to think that these pristine white remote control Canberras were just blown out of the sky.

This is WH652 by the way.
If you Google Canberra WH652 you find a report from a 1953 ‘Flight’ about Canberras and Avon engines being tested for 600 hrs of intensive flying. One of the 3 Canberras mentioned is WH652.
The 600 hr was completed in 50 days, in
which time some 300,000 miles were flown. Turn-round time
improved tremendously as the trial progressed; the average for
the first month was 1 hr 35 min, for the second month 1 hr 10 min,
and for the third month 36 min. On one occasion Canberra
WH652 landed, was serviced and took off again in 30 min.
She needed TLC – not blowing up!
The ADF Serials website has the following details:
WH652 U.10 Built by English Electric 31/10/52. Delivered to RAF as B.2 WH652. Converted to U.10. First flight 12/12/61. Allocated to WRE 23/02/63. Delivered to RAAF 16/03/62 at Edinburgh SA. Destroyed by missile 12/02/64. Written off 31/03/64
I wonder how easy to manually fly a converted Canberra was?

David Taylor.

Thanks Dave I enjoyed the 14 sqn Vampires.

Jim Barrett, my best friend at Changi, father was with 41 Sqn RNZAF, the Bristol Freighter unit on ‘the other side of the runway’. So I always was interested in the Kiwi comings and goings. Apart from the regular 40 sqn DC6A’s and the Bristol Freighters we did get 14 Sqns Canberra B(i)12’s pass through October 61. My pics need more salvaging with PhotoShop as the were severely scalded when developed by the Changi village processors.

Here’s NZ6106 on the taxyway. The ‘Interdictor’ Canberra’s always looked ‘the business’ because that fighter style cockpit so suited them.

DT

Sorry- no more Beaufighters. they had gone when I got to Seletar, so I also can’t wait to see the Duxford example completed.

Yes that’s a Macchi 320- It’s VP-KJJ. Must have been a great flight from Kenya in 1963.

The RAAF Dak is A65-73, a regular in Singapore as it was presumably one of the Daks at RAAF Butterworth in Malaya.

Getting back to Meteors. I had noticed that some modellers have, in the past, discussed how accurate the Corgi model of a 1574 Flight F(TT)8’s markings were.

Here’s a shot of F8 WA880 in the ‘later markings’ that it wore when at Changi from mid 1963. Does this help any modellers?

David Taylor.

PMN

The photos are back now…that’s obviously what happens when your Internet Provider does some maintenance! I noticed that lots of guys on the PPRuNe Historic aircraft forum host their pics on third party websites like Photobucket and they are often removed, after a time, making the thread somewhat ‘threadbare’.
Yes I’m a sound engineer and my company is called Postfade.

David Taylor.