Ah, at Prestwick. I believe that Shanwick control was long in that half-timbered old house behind. And how can I ever forget those ex-BEA Cambrian Viscount 700s - my first ever flight, which got me started in all this, was on one. But t'was nothing to do with Aden.

Redbrae House contained the Scottish Control Centre as well as Shanwick Oceanic.

Brian 48nav and Herod
Posts#27 and #28
Mr Pearson was his name, leading member of the Swindon Town Supporters Club. When arriving back from Far East with 'goodies' dreaded arriving on a Sunday or Monday if Swindon Town had lost on the previous Saturday as he was then particularly punctilious.

KelvinD
Your post #26
Here's two other interior views to stir your memories.


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...bin2Medium.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...bin3Medium.jpg




WT - 99 Sqn Britannia's 1959 -1963

Very lucky, brief window of BUA VC10 October 1964 before BUA started the South American route and took the VC10s away and put the Brits. back on the Aden route!

I think BUA then lost the military contract, it going to British Eagle for a few years (as can be seen in one of the photos above). The BUA Britannias were then disposed.

Warmtoast. Yep, that was the name.

Another story, which is as related to me. (I can't verify its accuracy) A Wessex crew did a favour for a local bigwig out in Sharjah, and were each given a Rolex Oysterdate for their pains. All three eventually went to UK on leave. The captain, somehow went via Prestwick and, being a Scot, wasn't charged any duty (Scot free?). The second pilot went through Gatwick, where Customs "valued" the watch at a very nominal rate. The poor crewman went through Lyneham. The watch was impounded, pending valuation. Later, back in Sharjah, he got a letter from Customs stating a high valuation, and inviting him to cough up the money in return for the watch. I'm not sure whether he did.

Bloody horrible people! A colleague escorted his wife and infant child back to the UK, following the death of his older child in Aden. He watched the customs at London (don't remember which airport he used) and when very close to his turn at the head of the queue, he pinched the poor little sod, causing it to howl a lot. He spent a minimal amount of time with the Customs as they didn't want the noise!
ICM: Trust me, we flew over Armenia and Georgia. This came from the crew member who brought out the chart. The chinagraph line was not thick and went nowhere Turkey.
Warmtoast: Thanks for the additional photos. As my flight from London was on a Britannia, and was my first flight on a powered aircraft, I became rather fond of that aircraft. Having said that, I once flew on an Argosy from Aden to Botswana and it still brings back memories when I see examples such as the one at Cosford.
As for the VC10, my first flight on one of these was not until I joined BA/IAL in 1977 and travelled to Jeddah on one. Using staff travel in addition to my regular home leave, I flew many trips on VC10s LHR to JFK, Tokyo to Hong Kong, Colombo and Seychelles, Mombasa (diverted from Nairobi), Kahrtoum etc.
Wile enduring some training at Rockwell Collins in Dallas in 1978, I was surprised to find that many of their international staff would often turn up at JFK on the outward leg of a foreign trip and look for people with tickets on a VC10 and swap them for the 707 tickets. They loved it!

May I ask where this image was found? It has clearly been copied from my website but the text below is not part of my site. The full sequence of images is here: C/n 804 - G-ARVA - 5N-ABD

You're missing a few clues, Is it the Duxford one?, however it has a freight door as you can see by the window configuration and an inflight probe fitted, also one clue you all have missed is you can see on the image where they have covered up the RAF front of the wing pax door and presumabley added the rear pax door on the port side as shown in the film.
Ex VC10 :)

Please refer to a PM sent to you.

The information under the photograph was added by myself from information on the web.

Sorted via PM. Apologies for the interruption!

See post #9.

There can't have been a second pax door in front of the wing as the only VC10s available for filming are three Super VC10s, all with second doors behind the wing. Unless they used XR808 at Cosford which is very unlikely as that meant that they would also have to lengthen the fuselage using the computer.

G-ASGC is the most likely answer as that is the only one that has the nose gear doors drooping open, something clearly visible in the screen shots from the series.

What happened to the ex BUA VC10 which, due to an incident, (a Bedford controller told me they found the fuselage was 'bent') was grounded and parked at Bedford for many years?

You're mixing up two VC10s. The one that was bent was G-ARTA, but this happened at Gatwick. See here for photos: C/n 803 - G-ARTA (there is also a link there to a page on British-Caledonian.com with a very complete account of that final flight).

The one at Bedford was not bent in any way, but this was also an ex-BUA one: C/n 825 - G-ATDJ - XX914

KelvinD: I continue to be surprised at the thought of that routing you describe, and can only add that as many times as I flew the CENTO route in various aircraft, a prime concern was to ensure that we'd avoid any Soviet territory. The reason for that comes out quite well in the "Radar coverage in Turkey in 1966" thread that sits a few lines under this one, and I'll leave it at that.

NutLoose - Maybe my ageing eyesight I'm not sure but the tyres on the left gear don't seem to sit too well on the concrete underneath. Also, Lightnings on the dirt, Union Jacks on the lower rudder, oh and the Firestreaks under the leading edge. Oh sorry, that's another post . . .

To keep things interesting, I just heard from someone in the know at Duxford that it wasn't 'GC in The Last Post. This airframe was used for filming again today but this appears to be a repeat of the July session and may be for a British Airways commercial (photos here: https://forum.keypublishing.com/show...92#post2413092)

On a somewhat related note, for those of you who have been waiting for Scott Henderson's new VC10 book: it is now available! I won't post the link here as that may be seen as advertising but it is on my site on the News page.

A simpler explanation would be that it's a K.3, which would therefore have both the freight door and rear pax door.

Which would make it either ZA147 at Bruntingthorpe or ZA148 at Newquay.

I said at #2 it sounded like Bruntingthorpe!

ICM,

I tend to agree with you about the route over Turkey, I have been reading up a lot about this area and feel it most unlikely a western aircraft would have routed over Soviet territory.

Jhieminga,

Good to see GC being looked after, she is special!!

.... or ZA150 at Dunsfold, or it could be K4 ZD241 at Bruntingthorpe but then the cargo door is a red herring.

True, you did. :O

But you said your guess was based on post #1, which merely said

So either of those K.3s could equally be a candidate (with a bit of help from Photoshop, obviously).

Yes, I forgot about that third possibility - ZA150 at Dunsfold.

KelvinD & ICM
 

I recall as a Herc' nav passing the little route map for the pax to the loadie to take to the back.

There used to be a load of jokers in those days and my guess is that the nav in question drew the route across Soviet territory as a wind-up, perhaps fully expecting some 'senior' passenger to dash forward demanding, ' WTF is going on?'

We were fully aware that if we strayed off-route into Russian territory we would almost certainly be shot down.

While it sounds simpler, a K3 is actually not that well suited for this job. The front door on the left side is permanently closed as these doors were converted into escape chutes, and the rear door was bolted shut as well during the Tanker conversion. I know that the team on ZA150 have opened up one of the rear doors but I cannot remember if that means that it can be opened normally. The hinges may have been removed during the conversion, going by my photos.

It was the mention of Lightnings in the background as well as the refuelling probe which suggested Brunty to me.

Ah, right.

Sadly the Lightnings (five of them in the background, with distinctly odd tail markings) were also thanks to Photoshop, as the OP mentioned.

Getting that number of English Electric's finest in one place for real would be a pretty challenging project nowadays.

In the film "The Aviator", 2004, about Howard Hughes, there is a scene where Leonardo di Caprio, as Hughes, is standing in front of a whole line of five or more Lockheed Connies, in full TWA livery.

Self, plus another adjacent chap, likewise not of younger years, both suddenly sat upright in our cinema seats in London trying to pick out just how it had been done and which Connie model they had based it on.

Wasn't one of you lot, was it ? :) Film CGI technology has doubtless moved even further on in the intervening 13 years.

Having finally grabbed a decent HD screenshot from the first episode of the Last Post I am led to suspect that most of the "VC10" is a CGI model rather than 2D photoshopping over an existing airframe. To me neither the nacelles nor the tailplane bullet look quite right, and the system air intake on the leading edge near the wing root looks both too narrow and too low. The lower fuselage panelling appears overemphasised and the window layout is strange - what is that gap just ahead of the wing? And the BOAC blue is not right, unless the producers were going for the Instagram look...

And with all the trouble they must have taken to model it, adding or failing to remove the FR probe is very strange!

But the programme, to be fair, seems pretty good so far!

My late father-in-law always advised that, when reading any factual publication, to always go to the source. With that in mind, I have contacted the BBC to ask them about it. Awaiting results.

It took two days in an Argosy via Jeddah El Adem Luqa. :ok:

Ahhh then it's easy to identify if it's ZA150, as ZA149 and ZA150 being both ex East African Airways have an extra 68psi switch in the Air conditioning ducting..... Strange things you remember of the Vc 10 courses ;)

Fair enough, though I'm confused as to why ZA150 (also an ex-EAA 1154) would be different ?

That would certainly explain why this is still a mystery. I would have expected someone in the know to have responded and confirmed our suspicions by now.

Please let us know if you hear back from the BBC Herod!

Just an update. I've had a reply from the BBC. They have given me an address for the makers of the series, and I've sent a query off to them.

I've had a reply from the filmmakers. It's completely CGI. here is a link to how it was done.

https://www.facebook.com/blackginger...pu-xNg&fref=nf

Cunning.

Why did they give that awful dusty colourwash I wonder

great link to the CGI work... very interesting and realistic!

The blue could have been a more appropriate BOAC dark blue and a lot neater as well and why did they add the refuelling probe in the CGI.