It was still head and shoulders above the norm.




..

Fed up with the totally unneccessary too-far-in-the-foreground music.

When are we going to get some presenters who do not act ( and sometimes sound like ) hysterical puppies.

Feeling unusually generous - 4 / 10

Perhaps try the next instalment with the sound muted out.

I loved it, having been a schoolboy on the south coast in the 1950s.
Spotter's paradise, the location and the time.
And the programme too.

WIWAMM

When I Was A Met Man of course.

When I Was A Met Man
 

Forerunner of "When I was a rich man"?

Nutloose, agree.

Diesel Addict, it had sound? :) Apart from the presenter prattling on, bring back the likes of Raymond Baxter, any music passed right by me.

How odd!! - did nobody else catch the instances given of the Septics doing their best to cause problems for an ally's aero-industry which had helpfully provided them with early gas turbine experimental and manufactured products?? :mad: Perhaps I was watching something else - it does happen occasionally nowadays:sad:

comfortable, comfortable only.

HOVE! from whence I spotted doodlebugs, mosquitos, spitfires, typhoons, tempests, the D-day halifax and Stirling tugs with gliders [and Albemarle?] the Wyvern, Princess, Brabazon, Hunter, Swift and a hundred others. And a bike ride to Miles Aviation at Shoreham Airport.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times .........

Instances?

I suppose its a bit like breathing. We get so used to it that we don't even notice after a while.

Comet, don't export it, but we will export the 707 (were that type of engine used on a long range bomber?)

Concorde, too loud for us. But we will build something bigger and faster (but failed)

There is another contender, but I'm not brave enough the mention THAT aircraft.

Viprods

NASA Ames had U2s in the 70/80s flown by their own pilots. Some of them were retired USAF, dont know about all of them. They got a lot of publicity and TV face time when Mt St Helens blew in 1980 and they were flying data gathering sorties. I lived on extended finals and the U2s would come whispering low over the house. Happy Days!

langleybaston,

Shoreham Airport, nice place but I would loved to have seen the place when it was at it's peak. Only been down here for the last 10 years or so.

My mother hated doodlebugs but when living in South London at the age of 12 I can understand that. She did tell me that one dropped a couple of hundred yards behind the house on the other side of the road but her only memory of it was seeing the owners grandfather clock upright on the footpath near the gate after being blown though the front door still in a reasonable state.

Would liked to have seen the aircraft going off to the invasion and I understand the Operation Market Garden fleet passed near there as well and was a sight to behold.

Not too far away around Rottingdean and Falmer was a tank training area. Quite often when working for the Police I took calls of UXB's which were often inert training rounds but so discoloured and rusty they had to be treated as real.

They (Classic Airforce) shot the JP footage themselves from a PA 28 and presented it to the BBC, suprised no ones mentioned the pins still in on the face blinds, I suppose the seats must be inert on it.

Blog Comments

I thought I spotted John Atkinson of 33 and 230 vintage in the test pilot segment, who certainly flew jets in his yoof. But he wasn't a test pilot as I recall.

CG

nimbev,

Mt St Helens caused some grief for the company I worked for at the time (Transamerica Airlines) although glad to say HQ dealt with that area, we at Gatwick dealt with Europe and the Middle East.

One of our L-382's took off from Mcloud AFB and within 15-20 mins had lost two engines and suffered "sand blasting" effects on the leading edges and windscreen. They landed back at Mcloud within 10 mins and of the other two engines one needed to be replaced as well.

I looked.

Visor covers too!

Well I thoroughly enjoyed it. James Holland always comes across as a historian who is an aviation enthusiast rather than just another journo who has no affinity with the subject. I look forward to part 2.

(I particularly enjoyed the posh old biddy who 'rushed inside' to tell everyone she had seen an aeroplane without a propellor!)

If you look closely at the footage of the JP front end, the bang seat triangle cleary has Inert written on it.

A very good programme in my view as it had at least one item in it that I wasn't aware of in the US trying to stop the export of the Comet (and I could have written most of the script for it off the top of my head). However having researched the Files at kew about the export of Bloodhound to the Swedes and Swiss, I was aware that the US tried to stop the export of the Mk 2 to the Swiss on technical transfer grounds. The guys at the FCO were quite clear in the documents that it was purely sour grapes on the part the Septics seeing that they had already cleared the Swedish deal.

I wonder.

Prior to the V-force switching to low level I saw maps with eastbound routing over France, Switzerland and Austria. Post the switch to low level the routing was over Sweden.

Rosevidney, you ask "why?".

Probably because journalists tend to come in just one flavour; sloppy and sour - the difference between the BBC and the appalling grauniad is thus pretty small.

I could clearly see the Inert sign on the Vampire that was shown some minutes later, but not on the JP which appeared to have no red triangle.

Good point nimbev, I was given a list of names & ranks of military pilots plus the Lockheed test pilots that flew the U-2, from a SR-71 pilot. So presumably the NASA pilots had not been included on that list.