The Boys' Own Book of Aeroplanes

Picture taken from a Canberra? [/RAF Luton]

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Did you see the (blimp) red arrows post today? :joy::joy::joy:

Will be looking out for the Red Arrows tomorrow evening over Hampstead seconds after they fly over Wembley 19:48 travelling west to east and back home.

Of course seen them loads of times but as part of the pre match preparation its unmissable.

I will always love the Canberra, not least because it’s one of very few aircraft the yanks had to buy from us because they just couldn’t make anything as good at the time.

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Lovely thing, only time I’ve seen it was at FIA’14


English Electric Canberra PR9 by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

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I used to work with a Canberra nav, who always claimed the only aircraft with better high-altitude performance was the U2. There really wasn’t anything else that could do high level PR like it, apparently.

I was at a show with a Canberra present years ago and was struck by how ancient it looked compared with more recent jets - very WWII vibe about it with the cigar shaped fuselage and big wheels/tyres, and a really long take-off run - but still a lovely thing to see :heart_eyes:

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I think it has little holes on the leading edges to control the airflow over the wings :nerd_face:

Be glad to hear the end of this saying, but this is cool

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One of the comments indicates it’s a cool piece of CGI.

I wonder what the biggest piece of messaging managed by organised fliers in actual aircraft is ? I’d guess maybe a single character or symbol ?

Yes, thought it maybe to good to be true

From the RAF ā€˜s 100th anniversary flypast:

Not saying that’s the biggest, btw.

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Already quite a few more than I would have guessed. Nice to see the RAF has 22 aircraft, or were some of those drafted in from the Yanks :grin: ? (Since they’re flying in the right places, maybe not …)

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Still Uber cool though

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The USAF Thunderbirds Squardon fly pretty tight formations

image

Signature trick

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We all had similar cases for our books during my time at the polytech.
I could recognise mine with the stickers of the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels…

A now-deceased friend of mine was flight engineer on Canberras used during testing of British A- and H-bombs in the 1950s and '60s, tasked with collecting atmospheric samples at different altitudes and TADs. They endured some quite extraordinary rides through shockwaves and other phenomena that would have shook something like a Washington or Shackleton to bits, the Canberras survived needing only minor repairs. By the time of the end of the tests in Australia the aircraft were so ā€˜hot’ they just buried them whole way out in the desert.

They flew a lot of sorties, and because Jim was good at what he did, he flew on the majority of them; despite all the exposure to christnose-what, he lived to nearly 90 without a trace of the Big C…

I wish I could have recorded his tales, but I only got him talking about it once when we’d been drinking Trappist beers in a bar in Aalst decades ago, and I only recall bits’n’bobs. He finished his service on the Royal Flight in the 1970s, and had some compelling tales to tell about that, too!

RIP Jimbo.

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20,000 nuts and bolts flying in formation

The Blue Angels fly a tighter formation than any other team iirc.
There have been instances of airplanes touching each other in this manouever.
(They are not called collisions!)

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Those would be the same tests that the splendid Atomic Tank participated in.

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Fabulous, I’d not heard that tale.