Flying (balloons and kites) has been going on at Farnborough since the 1890s. heavier than air flight has been going on since 1908.

I looked for a DVD of “Strategic Air Command” a few months ago and one didn’t seem to exist.

I was watching the Farnborough display from my back garden – so it was hard to judge where he was in relation to the display line.

In any case, these practice displays may not be indicative of what the actual displays will be like. Often, especially at Farnborough, the Display Committee will require that certain maneouvers be modified for safety reasons.

I would have guessed that the film is 1966 at the very latest. The British United scheme on the Carvair is definitely the early 1960s scheme. They changed in the mid 1960s to the “biscuit/blue” hockey stick style BUA scheme.

Dublin (which was in neutral Eire) was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1941 causing around 40 fatalities.

The oldest Farnborough shows I have on VHS tape are from 1982 (commentary by Raymond Baxter, interviews with John Blake, Peter Lygo of BAe etc).

However, in 1980, BBC Bristol made a four part documentary series about aviation in the west country, narrated by Robert Powell, called, naturally, “Aviation in the Wset”. In one episode, they featured the ACTUAL recording from TV of Gloster Javelins taking off and the display of Westland and Bristol helicopters. I think they date from 1957 and must surely be the oldest video recordings of a UK airshow. The comentator was Charles Gardener. I taped the programme when it was repeated on mainstream BBC2 in 1981. Surely those programmes must still exist somewhere.

In the same series, they also superimposed over newsreel footage the live BBC radio commentary of the first flight of the Bristol Brabazon, Charles Gardener was the main commentator that day too.

Are these episodes commercially available on DVD?

(I don’t have Discovery Wings).