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Old 11th Feb 2010, 22:32
  #30 (permalink)  
WHBM
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: London UK
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Bregeut Deux Ponts

Another type I remember, known to us schoolkids, alas, as the "Duck's Pants". There was a deep night Air France freighter which in the mid-1960s made a climbing turn out of Heathrow over a relative's house in Chertsey at about 02.00, maybe at 1,000 feet if they were lucky, and was renowned for waking up the whole town.

But more remembered was one of the Air France pax/freighter combi conversions which did the afternoon flight a few days a week from Paris to Bristol and back, up to about 1968. I was once allowed to accompany next door's au pair (who, as I was an immature 15 year old, I quite fancied), returning to Paris, to Bristol Lulsgate to "show the way", we took a local bus which put us off at Lulsgate Bottom, and walked up the remaining half mile to the airport, me manfully struggling with her suitcase, with the Deux Ponts silhouetted on the skyline against the evening winter sunset. It was the only one I ever actually saw (that Chertsey one was only heard). They seemed to have got about half a dozen pax that day, who would have been lost in such a large aircraft, goodness knows why it was used on the route.
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