As promised in post 45, I checked with David Mackenzie, the original boss of the Al Mahatta museum. He sent me the following:
This particular aircraft started life as a Mark 2a registered with BOAC as G-AMXA and first flown on 27th August 1953. It was shown at the Farnborough SBAC airshow the following month as the first production aircraft with Rolls/Royce Avon engines. It concluded its flight trials with a convincing demonstration of long range characteristics when John Cunningham covered the 3064 miles from London to Khartoum non stop in 6 ½ hours on the 22nd January 1954. It was the first Comet to go to the Royal Air Force, allocated serial number XK655. In 1955 it was modified at Marshalls of Cambridge to the secret 2R electronic intelligence gathering (ELINT) version, and during its time with 51 Squadron it was based in Cyprus. Known as a “spook” it patrolled low level the sensitive borders of Eastern Bloc countries with experimental surveillance and radar equipment, frequently calling at Sharjah for fuel. Back in England it was employed to do trials for Smiths Instruments and when retired from flying it was sold for £4,000 to the Strathallen collection in Scotland. Sadly, on landing at Strathallen, it caught the starboard undercarriage on a wall, ripping it off completely, but it was quickly repaired for static display. When the StrathallenMuseum closed in 1990 it was broken up and scrapped with only the cockpit section surviving. This changed hands a few times and deteriorated in the process until Tim More of Skysport Engineering Ltd in Bedfordshire rescued it, restored it, and put it on the roof at GatwickAirport in 1995. After spending many more years outside it was returned to Skysport for restoration again before shipping to Sharjah to take its place in the Al Mahatta Aviation Museum as the first Jet Airliner to land at Sharjah.
Comet on grass. No way! See what I just put on as post 46 after contacting David Mackenzie. He also sent me a pdf file of 655's history. How can I put that on prune?
Further to the postings above about Comet XK655 and its activity in Sharjah, there is a very interesting report from a former 51 Sqd electronics operator at http://www.spyflight.co.uk/51sqn.htm
[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG] Thank you for the great entries to the thread on Sharjah Old Airport and related issues on aviation in the lower Gulf. Great pix Jebal Akdhar and the story of the Firq-Saiq run which I am able to drop into dinner conversation to great amusement!. It reminds me of various memories of growing up in Bahrain during the '60's when the 'old man' was flying for Gulf Aviation. (Gulf Aviation…..the original Gulf airline, all the others are up-starts!! I mean start ups…..!). I was intrigued with the pix of the Pioneer aircraft which I remember along with the Beverley's at that time as well as a collection of the 'V' bombers that used to pass through on a regular basis! As I was at the RAF Muharraq school we were aware of the different flights & the ground crews who were brought in for different exercises and operations occurring in the area…. The Pioneers I remember well as I remember that I used to cycle up to the airport in the early '70's to clamber over the wrecks of old Pioneers that had been stripped of any useful items and dumped behind the Gulf Aviation hanger. Used to be fun climbing up around the cockpit and checking out if there was anything still interesting to take as a souvenir….until the old Baluchi night watchman would shoo us way with his night stick ! Ahhh …airport security was in a different league in those days …. With regard to the services and aircraft in the Lower Gulf at that time I hope that some of you might have an interest in the photos that I have listed on the thread. There is one of the old man with the DC3 on the ground in Ibri, Sultanate of Oman, pictured with Capt. Lloyd Brickhill, plus the essential airport staff ….!! ( Note; the firefighting equipment in front of the aircraft forward of the starboard engine ready for start up….) The other two pix are of the leased Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company DH Dove reg:
(G-AMUZ), featuring myself with Bob Milne's sons, the GM of ADPC at the time. During school holidays he would take his sons from Bahrain to AUH, in the Dove taking the best part of the day, going via Doha, Jebel Dhanna & Tariff. The pic is of Tariff or Abu Dhabi International Airport !! I am sure that we were only asked to come along to chase the goats off the runway before take off!! If there is a website that focuses on Gulf aviation from the past & flying in the Trucial Oman I would love to contribute and get others to do so as well! It would be nice to remind certain airlines and their management that they have a lot to thank the original pioneering aviators for opening up the routes & generating business in the Lower Gulf all those years ago. Humility is not a quality of the current airlines !
Thanks, gulf, for these extra data. I am trying to piece together details for a history of aviation in the gulf. More about that later. In the meantime, can you throw any light on the airfield I enquired about:
I Garey Thank you for the link Even now, 40 years on, I'm still a tad surprised that a Spec Op has actually put into print what 51 Sqn did all those years ago. Very interesting, of course, to those of us who served at Wyton in those days [and who flew over the Kola ? peninsular on several occasions.]
How wonderful to see something of this famous airport and how fabulous to know there is now a small aviation museum inside 'the fort.'
There is a wee bit about this in Alexander Frater's fantastic book 'Beyond the Blue Horizon' - this is defititely a 'must read' book for aviation fans and anyone with an interest in the old Imperial Airways routes fromm Croydon to the Far East and onwards.
Some years ago (more than ten I think) there was a television series about aviation and I am sure I remember seeing moving pictures of a Handley Page 42 landing at Sharjah, taxying up to 'the fort' and the pax getting off.
It must have been quite a romantic and exciting journey in those far off days. Mind you, I can still muster up a bit of excitement for LHR despite all the critics. After all, a flight is a flight is a flight!
My 8mm films taken in 1959-61 have been digitalised. This clip of Twin Pioneers flying in Muscat & Oman is now on You Tube. YouTube - Firq - Saiq Twin Pioneers
In the one you label as flying past Buraimi, I can clearly recognise the rocky spine that extends from Jebel Haffit, just by the modern city of Al Ain, where I lived for 4 years and that I still visit regularly.
As you know, I shall be up at Saiq in a few days to commemorate 50 years since Owen Watkinson's Venom crashed up there (8 Sqd Venom crash in Oman 50 years ago). I shall try to locate the site of the old airstrip, which must be very close to the crash site. I shall report back later!
It was still a sand runway when I returned to the UK in August 1961. In August 1963 I was posted to Aden on Argosies to find it had been given a hard tarmac type surface, even though it was only 100 ft wide.
I seem to remember that there was a camel trail that crossed the runway which required air traffic to ring a loud bell (church type) to warn camel drivers and goat herders of aircraft movements. Yes the new narrow tarmac runway could be a trap as it looked soo long!
Yes the new narrow tarmac runway could be a trap as it looked soo long!
It was a great leveller of young co-pilots who thought they knew it all! Give then the landing at Masirah, which was 300 Ft wide, followed by the next one at Sharjah. Inevitably they would round out high at Masirah with the inevitable firm landing. The narrow runway at Sharjah fooled them into thinking they were high until they flew into the ground!
A superb thread. This whole area was my stamping ground in the 70s and early 80s. I doubt if I would recognise any of it now judging from the pictures I have seen.I hope someone can get a website going on the region though the years. I remember I was in a bookshop in Jeddah a few years back and they had a book on Aviation in The Trucial States with a number of excellent pictures and I could kick myself for not buying it now as I cannot remember the author or publisher
In response to what brakedwell has said about Saiq airfield up on Jebel Akhdar in Oman, and especially his recent amazing films on YouTube, I was up exploring what is left of the Saiq strip last weekend, 29 August 2008. It is quite difficult to find, and the whole area is very rough indeed. We could not even find the sandy strips that brakedwell described and of which he sent me a photo privately. I think the surface has been eroded since then. But it was exciting to stand on the threshold and imagine the Twin Pin coming in, and even more so to stand in Sharaijah village perched high above the strip and imagine brakedwell's plane approaching that enormous cliff on finals. Rather him than me. The fort seems to have disappeared, and the whole area is being encroached upon by an army camp and housing. Laurence
A fascinating thread, thank you gentlemen. Do any of you have any tales to tell about a Hudson, or possibly a Mitchell, I seem to recall lurking, along with other interesting aircraft, around the edges of the airfield at Sharjah in about 1969?
We have already covered this in a previous thread but I think you are talking about the fleet of the JW Mecom Oil Company which used to be based at Midway/Thumrait.
The aircraft were flown to Sharjah when the operation was closed down. The Lockheed Lodestar didn't make it beyond Sharjah and ended up in a scrapyard downtown.
The B-23 Dragon (N86E) and the C-82 Packet (N127E) didn't make it past Athens and ended up being scrapped there.
The only one that made it all the way back to the USA was the C-46 Commando (N9588Z).
So you are one of the guys that would wake us in the wee hours! ........along with the Sterling Caravelle. The old RAF Sharjah field, was near the town. In fact adjacent the old fort.............which used to be operated by International Air Radio, the fort that is! Did you by any chance take your 1-11's into the old Muscat base at Bait-al-falaj.............now that was a interesting approach!
