It all sounds very like British Rail continuing to build steam engines after nationalisation, many of which had working lives measured in single digits.

Met your father a few times in the offices at Blackbushe.

Good Morning,
Just a small diversion. There are a couple of Hermes loses that I would think most posters are probably aware of. Whilst still with BOAC, I think it was G-ALDN, crashed in west Africa in 1952, after a rather odd detour! Then there was the accident at Stanstead in 1958 with a Captain named Rayment.... who was unrelated to the BEA Rayment who was in the Elizabethan Munich crash 3 or 4 months before! Odd coincidence.... from memory.. both ex RAF, Kenneth Gordon and Gordon.

The Stanstead crash was on April 1st 1958, The pilot was Capt G D Rayment. My Mother got a number of letters of condolance after the Munich Elizebethan crash, little knowing the future.

David Rayment

Hello David, that's extremely eerie. As I remember there were quite a few similarities and coincidences.

Met your father a few times at Blackbushe.

Nice to see the old Hermes thread resurrected. The RAeS interviews with D.P. Davies have an interesting section on the Hermes (about 5 mins in to the Comet/707/Britannia episode).

He said it "flew like the Forth Bridge, it was terribly heavy". He recounts the story of doing engine out testing at Boscombe Down and after 3 circuits he had to have a rest as flying the test was so exhausting. He puts it down to the flying controls not being sufficiently balanced - huge aileron/elevator loads and rudder loads that were right up to the limits of the requirements.

Stansted....

Please let's not be pedantic
Captain Rayment was his father