Miles HDM 105

If you include the Miles HDM 105, this was only a proof of concept aircraft for the HDM106 light freighter. Beagle had no interest in the 106 and the design rights were sold to Shorts where it became the Skyvan, leading to the Shorts 330 and Shorts 360

The HD Aerovan was a conversion of M57 Aerovan G-AJOF with the wooden wing replaced by an Hurel-Dubois designed high aspect ratio wing. It first flew on 31st March 1957 but was severely damaged following a heavy landing at Shoreham on 28h June 1958 when the tailboom of the aircraft failed at the hinge line and the aircraft taxied in with the empennage dragging along the ground

Thorney Island

I remember RAF Thorney Island as the OCU for the C130, and the home for the first of the four C130 Hercules simulators built by Miles Electronics Ltd; the remaining three C130s were installed at RAF Lyneham. In the mid 70s as part of a research project into the system requirements for the addition of a sideways (Sway) degree of freedom for updating the existing C130s, approaches made by Singer Link Miles to the RAF to borrow the motion system actuators from C130 No 1 which was at that time still resident at Thorney. Further investigations revealed that it would be too expensive to power up the simulator to determine the state of the actuators prior to removing them from the simulator, so the project was abandoned and the low payload acrtuators were used instead. No 1 was later removed from Thorney and put into storage, and I believe it was scrapped when the RAF ordered new 6 DoF C130 simulators in 1984

B36 in action

Anybody here lucky enough to see/hear one in action ?

It was quite common sight in the mid to late 50s to see B36s crossing the South Coast at contrail height. The contrails were quite distinctive even if you did not see the aircraft itself: once or twice they appeared to be in-flight refuelling from a (presumably) KC135

can anyone tell me where they were based in the UK

Valiant crash at Southwick

Blimey that is a fantastic amount of information about the accident (should keep Dailee1 happy), thanks Zoot!
so the actual date was the 11th May 1956

Ok so I got my dates wrong, but the account of the accident on the Findon website is comprehensive, and at last a ghost is laid to rest.

I recall being in a class of Headmaster’s English when Alan Guy was summoned out of the room to be told that a plane had crashed on his house but no-one on the ground was hurt

My thanks to all the contributors Dai Lee

Valiant crash April 1956

Didn’t a Valiant crash in Southwick Sussex in April 1956. What was the cause of this accident, as I cannot recall seeing a report on the subject.