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Old 28th Dec 2017, 15:41
  #170 (permalink)  
Warmtoast
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: South of the M4
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OUAQUKGF Ops and brakedwell

Fascinating videos - TVM.
A year earlier (1961) I was one of the two crews from 99 and 511 Sqn that crewed a RAF Transport Command Britannia that was on static display at Paris (Le Bourget) Airshow (24th Paris Salon Aéronautique) in May 1961. One of my better trips with 99 Sqn IMHO.
The flying display programme was long, lasting (with a lunchtime interval of an hour-and-a-half) from nearly ten in the morning till after six in the evening and had something for everyone. But the star of the show was Al Shepard's Freedom 7 space capsule (the first American in space). On 25 May just three weeks after it had been recovered from the Atlantic, Freedom 7 went on display in Paris. By the end of the show some 650,000 fascinated attendees had taken the opportunity to view Freedom 7 up close. I remember seeing it there (as exhibitors we were at the show before it opened so beat the enormous crowds queuing up to see it).
From Paris Freedom 7 went on to Rome for an exhibition at a show there. It drew more visitors than in Paris with 750,000 people lining up to inspect it.

...but why Freedom 7 and Friendship 7 as titles for these spacecraft?



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