My first taste of a diversion day was on Saturday 4th January 1969. It was a cold, mainly sunny day without much wind. I went outside on hearing an aircraft which I guessed was probably an Autair Herald on one of the domestic schedules. I was slightly surprised to see a Viscount heading NW and climbing, having presumably departed from runway 26 and taken the (permitted then for non-jets) right turn across the town. I was even more surprised when binoculars identified it as an Aer Lingus machine. Viscounts during the winter months were rare; Aer Lingus unheard of.
Come lunchtime I was looking out of the window and saw what binoculars revealed as a Vanguard out to the west. These were a common sight routing Daventry-Garston inbound to Heathrow. This one, however, seemed much lower to the horizon than usual but also closer. Then it began a left turn and I watched it as it made its approach to runway 08. At the same time another Viscount - also Aer Lingus - came overhead at around 6000ft heading SE. The radio was on in the kitchen and I caught one of the lunchtime news headlines referring to widespread fog across the south east having closed Heathrow and Gatwick airports, with flights being diverted to several airports including Luton. So I cycled up to the airport as fast as I could pedal. Sitting at the traffic lights at the end of Harrowden Rd. (long before the large roundabout and Vauxhall Way were built) I could hear the sound of jet engines running, concluding that there must have been some jet aircraft diverted in as well as the prop variety. I was hoping maybe half a dozen flights perhaps on diversion, or maybe something big like a B.U.A. VC-10. I wasn't prepared for the sight that greeted me as I came past the Monarch hangar 7/8, with aircraft squeezed into every available nook and cranny. 20 aircraft were present out of the 34 reported as having been diverted in during the day. Add on half a dozen of the resident Autair and Britannia fleets (1 Ambassador, 1 HS748, 1 737, 3 Britannia 102's) gave a total of 26 airliners on the ground - how many parking stands were there in 1969? At a guess 17).
Only picture I managed to get was this one:-
(previously posted a couple of years ago but kindly deleted by our good friends Photobucket).
2 K.L.M. DC-9's were taxying out as I arrived. Also present were 3 Aer Lingus Viscounts, 2 B.E.A. Vanguards, 3 Trident 1's, an Argosy, 2 B.U.A. 1-11's and a Herald, a Channel Airways Viscount, Cambrian Viscount, BKS Britannia and a Viscount , plus the Austrian and Swissair Caravelles above.
I watched the K.L.M. DC-9's take off from the (only just opened) spectators car park. The 2nd one seemed to leave a trail of greyish-white smoke behind it, which I soon realised was actually a bank of fog that was creeping slowly north across the runway and went on to envelope the rest of the airport in a few minutes. Hence the lack of photos.
Will post some diversion photos from the 1980's in due course - watch this space....