Pre-war home movies: gliding site and Croydon ca. 1934
 

Forwarded with permission from another forum:

From before WWII, made by the late James Rudd Ratcliffe, SWMBO's
maternal grandfather.

- mainly gliders (also
Grayson on a day out, apparently, though could not see Mr
Cholmondley-Warner).

Croydon, likely ca. 1934,
includes Short L17 "Syrinx", Wibault 280, HP42 "Heracles", DH Dragon
Rapide, a Swiss Airlines DC2 and sundry others including I believe a
JU52/3M.


OP's father was a Flying Officer, hence the family interest.


'b

Camphill, 1938 or 1939
 

The first film of the gliders was almost certainly taken at Camphill, the Derbyshire and Lancashire Gliding Club at Great Hucklow, and probably the crowd scenes are the National Competitions in 1938 or 1939.
The hangar at the very start of the clip is still there. Some of the walls in the later clips have been removed (I helped !) but the windsock is still in the same position.
The gull winged glider seen climbing on the winch launch was a Kirby Kite which first flew in 1935.
Gliding stopped in August 1939 until 1946 for WW2.
Rob F.

Absolutely brilliant - many thanks

Hi everybody,

Would you mind pm'ing me? I am James Rudd Ratcliffe's nephew.

'Footless'

Croydon diversionary airfields
 

I have just watched this great film about Croydon Airport filmed in 1935..

Just wondering where the division airports were in that era as they would need customs and a terminal.

Heston - Gatwick - Lympne ? All had customs and terminals - not sure if Lympne had a terminal in the conventional sense at that time.

I assume, Biggin Hill, Heston or Hendon, or south Shoreham, not to worry about Customs until your on the ground.
When I was at school opposite 60-64 and it was still active, I thought it was grass only, was it concrete pre war? Cracking film.

Crikey, didn't Imperial Airways have some outdated kit. HP 42s and Shorts Scyllas versus Fokkers and Junkers. Even the French had a trimotor. As a plane spotter from "oop North" Croydon was always the Holy Grail in the 50s,especially the Whittemore hangar with all the Tiger Moths. "Yours for 50quid chief !".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penshurst_Airfield

The Handley Page 42 just looked so dated compared to the Douglas. I assume it was a DC2? Loved the engine start on HP 42 and the complex engine servicing.

Awesome film! The golden age of flying indeed. Loved the door open and pax disembarking from the Heracles while engines still shutting down! Simpler times.

Thanks for the link LTNman - very enjoyable little film :)

Croydon 'Diversions'
 

There were plenty of Airfields local to Croydon including Kenley and Biggin Hill plus the odd landing ground along the railway from the Kent coast.
However Croydon did suffer from local fog rather than low cloud. Of course its advantage was the road and rail connection to London which was important at the time.
I can remember when Banstead Station had its name on the roof for use in the early days of radio, and the Croydon revolving searchlight beacon was kept going for several years after the airfield closed to commercial traffic.
Gatwick only became popular when flying developed for overseas holidays, and only then when it got a hard runway as the location was noted for getting waterlogged before.
In fact Redhill would have been a better option as is was lower and on the railway line plus had good rail connections to London, also could have been extended which Croydon could not.

There's a rare bird indeed in this: at 10:25 there's a four-engined, shoulder-wing, monoplane. When I discovered that it couldn't be the A-W Ensign, I looked further and found it is the unique Fokker F.XXXVI. Wikipedia says there was only ever one because it couldn't compete with the Douglas designs, but compared with the DC-2 it had twice the number of Cyclones, but carried twice the number of pax.

Thanks LTNman for the video VVG. There's a super ad at the end for another video titled High speed flight: Part 1. approaching the speed of sound; overlaying a picture of a !!!! Beverley !!!!!

Beverleys used to arrive an hour after their sound, as did WGAF Dornier 28s, used to occasionally see them droning over here along Green One - think they'd been to Brawdy in connection with troop training.

Fabulous film, odd to think that was all happening 85 years ago, less than a mile from where I'm sitting now. Even closer is a small memorial to the DH-34 crash on Christmas Eve 1924.

The KLM Fokker taking off is passing over what appears to be the Purley Way Lido under construction on the other side of the A23 - what's left of that site is earmarked for housing I believe (the Art Deco diving board is still there and preserved I think!), and Croydon plan to turn much of the industrial area on the airport site into more housing. Thank God the open area of the airport is now common land and can't be built on... I hope.

Another pop up on YouTube - the airfield site as it looks now from above. Trying to remember when the Tiger Club last ran an airshow on the site - think it was 1988. You couldn't do it now...

Croydon TC Airshow
 

Well Treads BTC and myself took part in the anniversary air show in 1980, and there is plenty of room for another.
The new 'Roundshaw Estate' had been built, but I thought it had some mini tower blocks, were they demolished later for more conventional housing.
The Air Show was 'enabled' by the local council, and indeed it was 'interesting' being allowed to operate on this historic site.
It is nice that the tarmac 'turn and go' bit is still there and the drone shoot also covers the original airfield site over at Plough Lane and Foresters drive.
Oodles of room for a air show, or even another airfield, nice that so much remains.
I happened to be there on the day in 1960 that several Beveleys flew over low level to drop the local TA Para company as part of the Croydon Town Millenary celebration.
The grass on the old (closed 1959) airfield was quite high and dozens of troopers were to be seen 'wading' through all of this carrying their chutes towards the old terminal block.
Be nice to see some footage of that (the sound of multiple Centaurus was amazing).

I missed the 1980 one (at boarding school) but made the later one in '88 - Ray Hanna bringing the Spitfire down the B axis between a block of flats on Roundshaw and a factory chimney, some one's roll inverted on take off in a Pitts being slightly lower than intended and Brendan's run in with the local Rozzers (someone's stealing one of our aircraft!)... yes, there really were two Spitfires on Croydon's hallowed turf again 30 years after it closed, MH434 and maybe Pat Lindsay's Mk1. Can't remember now...

Well, look what I found: