This picture of the Desford was taken at Strathallan in 1981

Graham

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You might be interested in these pictures taken at Blackbushe in 1979. I don’t know how many of these belonged to Doug. Apologies for the poor quality of the scans.

Graham

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Here are a few more from overseas

Graham

Pensacola

Chino

Chino

RThai AF Museum Don Muang

USS Midway

Pima

Pensacola

McClellan AFB

You might be interested in these pictures of 1722. I was visiting Ysterplaat AB in Cape Town in 1987 and the curator, whom I had met several times before, invited me to the official last engine runs of this aircraft. I was exremely lucky as I arrived on the right day and there were only a couple of dozen other people there. I think the occasion was for a special SAAF Museum photoshoot. The photographer even let me walk round the aircraft with him. The engine runs finished with a salute with the water canons.
Of interest in the later pictures was the technique used to put the aircraft back into the hangar. As the wings were too wide to go through the hangar door, they put the aircraft in sideways with skates under the main wheels and the nose wheel turned through 90 degrees.
The last picture show the old gate guard which was subsequently broken up. Although it is marked as 1717 it is actually 1720 (1717 was broken up some time before). 1720 was then repainted to illustrate how 1717 was delivered in 1957 – note the old Springbok roundels.
As regards the crew, you can get an idea of their ages from the group photo taken after the engine run. The crew are wearing orange overall with badges on them.
I’m afraid that I don’t know whether they had any more engine runs after this occasion.

Graham

Here are a couple of pictures of 184 from Winston Brent in South Africa. They were sent to me by Stefaan Bouwer, an historian and author of several books on the SAAF

Regards

Graham

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Here is another British connection. The pictures were taken in 2004 – I don’t know if it’s still there.

Graham

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Hi comet,

The museum is fairly close to the centre of town and I visited it about 3 years ago. Well worth half a day of anyone’s time – I was even lucky with the weather. There is a large outdoor display as well as several hangars to visit. I’ve attached several pics of Mig alley. Click on the thumbnails for bigger pictures.
I took a taxi there from my hotel and caught a tram back to the centre of town. Be warned, when I visited, you were expected to have a tram ticket before boarding. As I couldn’t converse with anyone at the tram stop, this was a bit of a problem.

Graham

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