Buccaneer overhead Cape Town
 

Just watching the test match, on sky. Sure that was a Buccaneer, doing a pass???;)

It was! Airbrakes open, BLC vortices, what a sight! Somebody told Bumble that it was a Hunter? Aircraft reccy is not what it was!!

It was probably my mate from Thunder City. Flew with him in XW986 out of Cape Town in 2008 - almost exactly 25 years since my last operational sortie in a Bucc.

Bloggs;)

Heard a heavy jet overhead (a few km from cricket), but didn't get outside in time to see it...

Photo here;) South Africa vs England LIVE cricket score: Day four of the second Test | Daily Mail Online

Some of the Brunty Bucc crew flew in '986 with IP about a year or so ago. I think '986 is maybe the only one of the 3 x Bucc's out there currently still flying?

It looks great - what beautiful lines you have, my dear !!

Admittedly a year old but the latest news that I know of: Hangar 51 company buys Thunder City collection of Ex-Military Jets and aims to use it for Adversary Air Services - The Aviation Geek Club

Actually, this is news on the Buccs from November '22 Hangar 51 Aviation | Facebook

Good luck with that! This is well worth a read. https://aviation-safety.net/reports/...TNG_ZU-BEX.pdf

'986 was one of the three S2s (along with '987 and '988) delivered to RAE Farnborough in about 1974 and as such, being an MOD(PE) aircraft, must have had very low hours on it when it was 'retired'.
One amusing thing; when it was delivered the navs on Experimental Flying Squadron had to be trained on the up to date nav systems so it did a lot of flying on airways, the problem being that it cruised at 550 kt (T) which meant it overtook everything else in the airway including Tridents and VC10s ('normal' Douglas and Boeing types could only manage about 460-480) at whatever level it was flying which rather annoyed the airways controllers.

Good point Chevvron. Medium to high time airframes will have an extensive inspection burden in the wing lower front spar (especially wing rib connection at stn 80 and 110 from vague memory) and the Fin attachment bolts amongst others. But isn't one of their airframes one of the fleet that wasn't a "yellow Peril" (XW986-8)? The SAAF must have been well versed in this (despite embargoes) as they had appropriate inspection holes on their aeroplanes I had a look at in Museums a while ago. However, the availability of spares, general condition of the airframe and systems plus servicing capability will be foremost. The accident report for the Lightning certainly puts a doubt on the latter.

A case study of (A criminal) Normalisation of deviance...

Absolutely - horrendous!

All 3 were delivered to Farnborough in 'yellow peril' colours by my late great mate Terry Adcock (took me up in Hunter '321 one day; no 'g'suit or mae west!) but only one ('987 I think) stayed at Farnborough and the other two used to inhabit West Freugh and HOSM.
When Ark Royal (?) paid off, we got 2 more Buccs, one being XV344 and the other one was written off by Terry when he was avoiding a German Police helicopter in Germany; pulled 9g and the tailplane came off!

Given the SAAF used them, there should still be some old knowledge base floating around, and there was I believe a good stash of ex-SAAF spares out there, this new outfit probably have a chance of flying the Buccs again at least....maybe, if they are professional enough.
I think there is zero chance of the 3 x Lightnings and the Hunter ever flying again though. I've heard the Hunter is now in quite a poor state, which is a shame, as it was an ex-Black Arrows airframe, and had been one of the few remaining airworthy F.6's.