Although I'd watched Viscounts passing overhead Buckinghamshire on their way to/from Heathrow, my first close look was when my parents took us to 'London Airport' on a Greenline excursion one day in about 1956.
We sat on the viewing terrace watching an apparently endless stream of Viscounts arriving on 28R; as one touched down, another would be seen on short final. This seemed to go on for hours.
Next time I saw one close up was when I started my ATCO Cadet course at Hurn in late 1971; we were in a classroom which faced away from the airfield in either late '71 or early '72 when we heard a loud noise outside followed by a crash alarm. It wasn't until we went to drive home that evening that we saw the cause; a Condor airlines Viscount (with crudely painted out LH markings) had carried out an extremely short landing on runway 08 by touching down before the beginning of the runway and depositing its undercarriage at the start of the paved surface.
Last edited by chevvron; 9th Jan 2023 at 10:19.