I’m all for air shows, but this thread is getting well depressing.
“When I were a lad”, I went always went down to the annual CNE airshow along Toronto’s Lake Ontario waterfront. Dad took me when I was small, however I started to go along on my own when I was, I suppose, 13.
The last year I went, a Firefly was one of several warbirds doing level passes across the viewing area. The Firefly began a gentle climb, which became a steep climb, which became vertical, ending in a tail-slide downwards.
The nose whipped down and the aircraft began to spin, to starboard as I recall. It really wasn’t until this point that I started to wonder what was wrong. The nose came almost level as the Firefly was facing back opposite to its original line of flight. Then the other wing went over, and it plunged vertically downwards.
I don’t think I went again after that, however I of course heard about the Nimrod crash at the same air show, some years later. What was most disturbing about that latter incident was the fact that, in each of the previous shows at which I’d seem the Nimrod, the crew were carrying on a playful banter with the show commentator, which of course was broadcast to the crowd. I suppose the same act must have been going on just before the crash.
The vertical stabiliser from that aircraft is in the Toronto Aerospace Museum, on the site of the old dH Canada facility, in Downsview.
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