EB2... cute...
Mark - you jammy b*tch, you have the Concorde that made the last official scheduled flight on your doorstep... - I can not believe that the Spanish B*st*rds that now own Heathrow have no intrest in the last Concorde here (the first to fly operationally... G-BOAB) and British Airways (more low-life S. C. U. M.) are reputedly prepared to get shot of her...
Mark
ps I
DID recognise the Corsair; I'm going to go into a corner and sulk now, not...
We have a local museum at a site called Brooklands (which may be of note to motorsport enthusiasts) which has a museum dedicate to British Airliners, with a variety of most of Vickers and BAC's most notable types, including genuine test examples of the famous "bouncing bomb" (sorry Uwe)...
A notable "monster from the deep" is below...
The Wellington Bomber found at the bottom of Loch Ness...They ellected to preserve "as found" rather than "re-skinning" and there is an additional fuselage you can walk through...
Right, a genuinely relevant link... Now, all because "Her Royal Seatleness" mentioned a certain museum, I'm going into full wander mode...
Barkless - Loch Ness is pretty cold too... My Grandfather used to sail the Great Lakes, living in Michigan near 2 of his sisters that settled, from around 1912 to 1915, when he managed to get a passage back to the UK, and where he was sunk in the North Sea by a German U boat (no grudge Uwe)... he went on to be sunk, again, in WW2 (still no grudge...) by mines laid by the "Passat" off the coast of Australia, in 1940... the first vessel sunk in Australian waters in WW2... the "Tought Old Boot" lived on until he had completed around 54 years at sea, in 1954...
Uwe - any relatives at sea in WW1 or 2...? especially on the Commerce Raiders, "Passat" or the "Pinguin"...? that would just be too "small world...!"
Uwe
ps - possibly my all-time favourite War movie is "Das Boot" of which I have the TV series, video, Directors Cut DVD, soundtrack LP (love it!), book and I also had the stunning pictorial book by L G Bucheim, which I eventually gifted that to my old neighbour (a German guitarist called Martin Wismer, who's dad served on U's in WW2, and who's house used to be owned by a member of the "Yardbirds", so he said), as a favour for him gifting me his copy of "Fumblin Towards Ecstasy" (by a certain Canadian chantress)... totally honest point here - I was so enamoured with the book and the film (which I have never watched in English), that I started to learn German, so I could read the book, as originally written... never made it though...
CONCORDE...
Your's truly, at the controls..."Alpha Golf" (now based in Seattle) was one of 4 "spare" concordes that had no buyer, due to a number of FOREIGN NATIONALS WITH NO BOTTLE, not mentioning any names or countries...
Sod it... from the top Clockwise... The Guilty Parties... JAL, Lufthansa, TWA, United, Iran-Air, Braniff (sort of allowed of the hook), Continental, Pan-Am, Sabena and Eastern...... so they were almost gifted to Air France and British Airways...
The Class of '76... "Spot the Kenny" competition..."Alpha Golf" story...
She was sitting in the " Boeing 707 Majors" hanger being incessantly robbed for spares and was a "pet project" of the engineers to get her airworthy again, which never happened in my time in that hanger and she was the subject of one of my favourite stories...
... The greasy long-haired engineer was walking through the hanger one day, heading for a sausage sandwich (with lashings of tommy sauce), when an exceptionally loud voice called out...
"YOU THERE...! STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE...!"
(Oh crap, what have I done now)
The ex RAF supervisor, resplendant with handlebar moustache (straight up honest!) marched over to the near teriffied apprentice and stood in front of him, boot to boot and shouted in his face...
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DONE...?"
A large crowd of engineers and apprentices had started to gather, trying to see why Ken was about to have a strip torn off, again...
"Err... Err... I... don't..."
"YOU HAVE JUST WALKED RIGHT UNDER CONCORDE WITHOUT BATTING AN EYELID...!"
To which he span round and marched briskly away with a big grin on his face, to the laughter of those surrounding me as I looked up at the underside of the wings of "Alpha-Golf" and said, rather dumbly...
"Oh yeah..."
The idea was simple, it was 1977 and I, amongst many others, had started to take something that was so far advanced, for granted... there is still nothing (civilian or military) capable of performing as well as Concorde... anywhere on this planet... Higher... Faster... Longer... without reheat... to Mach 2.0 and above... anyone care to disagree...?
a 1970's, French environmentalist's view of Concorde...
Roshina by the cockpit of the "Brooklands Concorde", G-BBDG, which was the first Concorde to carry a full compliment of passengers...
My supervisor, post apprenticeship, spread the word that I was one of "Ron's Blue-Eyed Boys" meaning he could dump anything on me and never worry about it not being done... he only had one operational arm (due to a 1950's bike accident) but could lift me up, literally by the scruff of the neck... oh, BTW, a tenuous GIBSON link is the RD Artist advert pic just in front of his face...
How to test the structural integrity of a Pratt and Whitney JT9D...
this shot is rocking horse droppings as no one knows of another one like it... This is "Alpha Delta" getting a respray post the only time Concorde had another airline's colours (half BA - half Singapore International) ... in the main "Boeing 747 Major's" hanger at LHR ...I think that's probably enough randomness for this one...
