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Old 22nd Mar 2021, 20:12
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Specaircrew
 
Join Date: Feb 2000
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Originally Posted by Geezers of Nazareth
I have been collecting and collating info from these flypasts for many years. The flypast you are talking about is generally known as the "Queen's Birthday Flypast", and has occurred almost every year since the early 1950s; prior to that it was known as the "Sovereign's Flypast". On one occasion in the 1950s it was cancelled because there was a national rail strike, and it has been curtailed and reduced on several occasions due to bad weather. Some of the early flypasts were 'left to right' when viewed from the balcony at Buckingham Palace. The 1959 flypast was the first to be held on a Saturday (and has been ever since); the previous ones were held on a Thursday.

Sadly, information about the flypasts during the 1960s is a bit sparse. It wasn't always Vulcans; during the 60s it often involved Lightnings and/or Hunters, and I'd still like to hear from anyone who was personally involved in any QBFs.

I would assume that there must be some paper record of each flypast stored away somewhere, probably even OpOrders?
I did the Golden Jubilee Flypast in the VC10, lots of fun when Her Maj was late and the whole formation had to do a quick dogleg over East Anglia to get the revised timing to work. A more interesting set of flypasts was RMT 2000, 5 nights in a row over Horseguards Parade trying to not bump into the BBMF Lanc because of the massive overtake speed then overflying the Tina Turner concert on the way home!
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