Canberra over Portsmouth

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Couple of days ago my son was in Portsmouth and saw a Canberra flying fairly low.

Anyone know how many Canberras are left flying? He said it wasn't in "RAE" colours so he was curious about the operator..

Thanks

[eagerbeaver]

i can back that up with a sighting over royston (near cambridge) in the evening last wednesday about 7pm.

[Harrier46]

Was also over Southampton last week, from underneath it looked like a PR9. The RAF still have a few PR9 aircraft for reconnaisance duties. There is also a civilian Canberra based at Coventry I believe but the one I saw was in the light brown colour scheme and therefore probably RAF.

[McFunkletrumpet]

39 Squadron at Marham operate 4 PR9 and 1 T4. That I think is just about the total flying strength of the breed.

[Reichman]

39 Sqn have 5 x PR9s and 2x T4s. The aircraft over Portsmouth was a PR9.

[Anti-ice]

Wonderful to still see that this aircraft still 'on duty' while unfortunately many of its era have been left behind

Is/wasn't it supposed to be an absoluteful handful to fly - particularly on final approach?!
With that nice broad wing it looks like it should be rather pleasant, but i remember reading somewhere a while back that it was a daunting prospect for training crew...

[Tim Mills]

Anti-ice. Never flew the PR9, so can't comment on that mark, but 1000hrs plus on B2/B15 varients. A lovely aircraft to fly, no problem on finals, except the usual care needed if assymetric not to get too low and slow, when power required to gain runway might be too much for rudder to counteract. In fact the rudder could stall in this situation leading to uncontrolled yaw, roll, disaster.

Great aeroplane, glad some are still around. Cheers, Tim.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Many thanks folks.. I did actually talk to one or two Canberras during my time at Heathrow but, needless to say, they didn't land!

[Anti-ice]

Thanks Tim , appreciate your reply & v interesting to read

Amazing to think these were designed to replace the Mosquito and still going strong!

[Pom Pax]

June last year saw one lifting off from Marshall's, are they involved with the maintenance? Was alerted by the noise that something different was about to come into view over the trees.