Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts
Hat tip to David Cenciotti’s Aviationist blog for posting this amazing video of a Royal Air Force Typhoon flying a bit lower than usual during the final approach at the RAF Waddington International Airshow last weekend:
In other words, you don’t always have to go to Princess Juliana Airport in St. Maarten or the Greek island of Skiathos to be literally blown away by a super low aircraft approach!
Both the BBC and Wales Online have reported how the St. Athan RAF base in Wales’ Vale of Glamorgan, which was thought to be obsolete within two years of opening, is celebrating its 75th birthday. The celebration took place yesterday with a parade and a flypast, but there is once again some uncertainty as to the base’s future.
The St. Athan RAF base was conceived in 1938 as a maintenance base with the site being chosen because it was thought that south Wales was beyond the range of Luftwaffe bombers. However and on June 20, 1940, a German attack on the base launched from captured French airfields quickly brought any notion of a safe haven to an end. Moreover, the RAF was loosing so many aircraft that repairing what survived in combat seemed like an impossible task. This forced the base to reinvent itself as a source of experts in the reclamation of badly-needed spares from irreparably damaged aircraft.
In the 1950s, the base was given the task of maintaining Vulcan Bombers carrying Britain’s nuclear warheads, but its future became doubtful after nuclear warheads shifted from bombers to submarines. St. Athan RAF base was ultimately saved by the receipt of a maintenance contract for the RAF’s fleet of VC10 air tankers and later on by the newly-launched Tornado fighter jets.
Later on, many buildings were demolished as part of a doomed £14 billion scheme to create a tri-service Defence Technical College. Nevertheless, the base’s tradition of repairing aircraft is alive and well because according to Wing Cmdr Paul Regan:
"The recruits who come to St Athan today arrive with 10 weeks basic training and leave eighteen months later with such a range of engineering skills that we often have a job to hold onto them within the forces. We may not do the glamorous work here, but our graduates are the young men and women with the ability to repair equipment under fire, or manufacture a bespoke part for an aircraft in the middle of Afghanistan when it could take weeks to fly one in from the UK."
However, the base ceased being called RAF St Athan in 2006, and it now seems likely that there will be no RAF presence at the base by 2016. With that said, there is growing number of commercial businesses attracted by the Welsh Government’s business park on part of the base as St Athan continues to reinvent itself to stay relevant.
A German Dornier Do-17 that was shot down off the Kent coast more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain was successfully raised from the sea bed in the English Channel on Monday. Attempts by the RAF Museum to salvage it had been hit by strong winds over the last few weeks, but weather conditions for the hour-long operation were “near perfect” on Monday evening:
Source: BBC
It took three years to come up with a plan to raise aircraft which ultimately involved divers attaching lifting equipment to what was believed to be the strongest parts of it’s frame and then raising it whole in one single lift. Originally, the plan called for building an aluminum frame or cradle around the wreck, but those plans were abandoned after it became clear it would take too long cost more than the £600,000 project budget to do so.
The Dornier Do-17 aircraft is believed to be the only intact example of its kind in the world and has lain in 50 feet (15 meters) of water on the Goodwin Sands. However, the aircraft will still need a two-year restoration at the RAF Museum’s site in Cosford, Shropshire.
To learn more about the Dornier Do-17, check out a cool BBC interactive by clicking here along with an album of pictures showing what’s left of the aircraft.
Hat tip to David Cenciotti for posting a couple of graphics on his Aviationist blog that give an idea of just how big the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s future flagships, will be:
As David pointed out, the Royal Navy’s future aircraft carriers will not be as big as those in the US Navy; but at 280 meters and 65,000 tons, they will pack a punch. In fact, the aircraft carriers will be as long as 28 London buses and three times the size of Buckingham Palace.
In addition, the Daily Mail has posted this computer generated video of the aircraft carriers:
When you think of British aviation during World War II, Spitfires are probably the fist aircraft that come to mind but the Gympie Times in Queensland has recently brought our attention to a nearly as important but forgotten British aircraft from the war: The Taylorcraft Auster. Unlike the famous Spitfire, Taylorcraft Austers weren’t used as fighters but they played just as important of a role as British military liaison and observation aircraft 
as they would routinely brave both enemy and friendly fire to help lay battlefront phone lines, map and plot the allied advance, evacuate wounded soldiers and photograph enemy troop movements. Moreover, the aircraft saw extensive action in Normandy during D-Day.
Gympie aviation buff Chris de Vere happens to own one registered as VH-ABA – a registration that was previously held by a huge Sunderland flying boat that was sold to Qantas in 1938 and later scrapped (Hence, the aircraft is painted in Quantas colours). However, the article is a bit confusing as it calls his aircraft an Auster Autocar which (according to Wikipedia) was actually built after the war ended as a touring aircraft but a quick look up of the registration ID VH-ABA reveals that the aircraft in Gympie is an Auster AOP.V built in 1943.
However, owning an old aircraft is both a love hate relationship as de Vere says:
A problem is that getting parts has become damned near impossible.
It is love at first sight, but hate when you realise all the blokes who know how to work on it are retired or dead.
The last person to work on it was in his 80s.
He also commented that there are less than a dozen still flying.
Auster Aircraft Limited itself only existed in Leicestershire from 1938 to 1961 when it merged with Beagle Aircraft Limited which in turn was put into receivership in 1969 after it had become government controlled and needed more financial assistance. Auster models would also be extensively used after the war in the UK and British colonies for a variety of purposes with the name finally being dropped in 1968.
The Harborough Mail has reported that the world’s only flying Cold War-era Avro Vulcan XH558 bomber recently spotted in the skies above Harborough again after 15 years and £7 million was spent to restore it to airworthy condition at Bruntinghtorpe by the Sky Trust.
Picture by Chris Jenkins
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the history of British military aviation, the Avro Vulcan Bomber was used by the RAF from 1956 to 1984 and was very much part of the country’s nuclear weapons program. The Avro Vulcan XH558, also known as The Spirit Of Great Britain, was the twelfth Vulcan built and first flew in 1960 before being converted into a B2 Maritime Radar Reconnaissance, then into an air-to-air refueling aircraft and finally back into its original configuration when it was used as an RAF display aircraft from 1986 until 1992. Eventually, Avro Vulcan XH558 was restored to flying condition by charitable donations and funds from the UK Lottery’s Heritage Fund and continues to make appearances at important events.
The Vulcan is now based at Robin Hood Airport Doncaster/Sheffield but if you want to have the chance to see it again or for the first time, the aircraft will be making a special appearance at the Victory Show in Cosby on Sunday, September 9. The two day Victory Show will be held over a 100 acre site that will be filled with re-enactments from several theaters during World War II but the return of the Vulcan to the show for the first time since 2009 promises to be a highlight of the event.
