A recent news programme caught my eye when I realised it involved our great friends at the Farnborough Aviation Sciences Trust museum. It reminded me of the group of sadistic so-called doctors who populated the Institute of Aviation Medicine and tortured generations of unsuspecting and innocent RAF aircrew in machines such as the one the article featured, a centrifuge! This aforementioned device which resembles a vast witch’s ducking stool crossed with an iron maiden, first operated in 1955 but was decommissioned as recently as 2019 and has now received Grade 2 protection.

The Institute of Aviation Medicine

The Farnborough Centrifuge

The Cecil Hotel with it’s red and white ornate frontage

The august medical journal, the Lancet

Early versions of oxygen masks

An early mobile decompression chamber

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, FAST museum, The Library of Congress, those images within the Public Domain and the National Museum of Health & Medicine.

The story of my military flying career continues with the new challenge of flying the FA/18 Hornet round the beautiful skies of Australia.

The official crest of No 77 Sqn RAAF with its Grumpy Monkey

The 77 Sqn Mirages

The helmet fitting

An FA/18A cockpit

Sunset

The Head Up Display

The location of RAAF Williamtown

Firing the gun

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Nick Anderson and Google Earth.

Featured in a Scientific magazine which offered a first look inside the USAF’s new jet fighter, the F-89 Scorpion was to have an interesting history which involved the Battle of Palmdale and a top secret Canadian UFO!

A Scientific Magazine cutaway drawing

The Fly-off competitors

The Northrop F89 Scorpion

The 437th Fighter Interceptor Squadron

An F6F Hellcat red drone

Mighty Mouse rockets

1st Lt Moncla

The Canadian UFO

The official USAF report

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Scientific magazine, the USAF, USN, NASA, SDASM, RKO Pictures and those available through Fair Use and Public Domain.

Arguably one of the most talented and innovative aircraft developers of his time, John Knudsen Northrop had long sought an aircraft design that could start a revolution… a craft with minimum drag and a level of lift unachievable in any other form. Jack, as John Northrop was usually known, pursued his dream of building a pure flying wing strategic bomber that would exceed the capabilities of anything else his less imaginative competitors were designing.

The gliders of Otto Lilienthal

The Armstrong Whitworth AW-52

The Avion/Northrop Experimental No1 pusher 

The remains of a Horton flying wing

The Northrop N1M

Nortons XB35

The XP-79 fighter

The XB-49

The YB-35s being broken up at the cancelation of the project

The final successful B-2 Spirit

Images shown under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, the Library of Congress, Northrop, National Museum of the Air Force, Michael.katzmann, the IWM, Sanjay Acharya, the National Archive and NASA.

It was an unpopular aircraft because, well… a lot of aircrew were superstitious. They were renown for carrying lucky charms, doing things a certain way and never daring to change the habit because it worked for them last time. Their machine was a B17 nicknamed Old 666 taken from the last 3 digits of its tail number 41-2666 and they were the Eager Beavers!

Old 666

The Martin B-26 Marauder

The B-17 bombing Japanese shipping North of Australia

The B-17’s waist guns

The route for their recce sortie over Bougainville

The Japanese Zero

A Zero passes close aboard

The damage to Old 666

The brave crew fight the Zeros off

Jay Zeamer receives his Medal of Honor

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAAF, Mark Wagner, USAF, USAAC, Gary Fortington, US National Archives and Records Administration, SDASM, Steve Jurvetson and those in the Public Domain or orphaned.

The conclusion of one of the hardest flying courses in the Royal Air Force, the QWI course.  What faced us was the culmination of all our efforts over the past months of flying in the form of a week of intense work, drawing together everything we had learned. We had to fly a series of missions against all comers, demonstrating our level of leadership, control, tactics, formation management, aggression and skill. These sorties were complex and demanding, involving tactics we devised to allow us to fly without the use of the radio from start to finish.

The RAF’s F4 Phantom

The East German border

The Nicholson Trophy for best student on the course

Off to a specialist burns unit in an RAF Search and Rescue Sea King

Packing up our married quarter for Australia

The delights of Hong Kong

My tropical uniform

The last leg to to Australia

Our little married Quarter at RAAF Williamtown

Meeting our neighbours at street BBQ

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF and the author.

The 1920’s and 30’s were times of radical societal changes, particularly in the freedoms that women then demanded. The suffragette movement, the contributions made by women in the first world war and other dramatic events had clearly shown that forward looking women were no longer going to be content with the roles that men decided they were suited for. Aviation played its part in allowing women the freedom to tackle challenges that were previously denied to them, a fight for equality continues to this day.  It is right that we celebrate those early pioneers who took to the air and led the way.

The Suffragette movement which paved the way for woman’s emancipation

Will Hay, one of Amy’s flying instructors

Amy’s planned route to Australia

Amy’s Gypsy Moth, “Jason”

Amy in India

Amy arrives in Australia

An Airspeed Oxford and notice of Amy’s “MISSING BELIEVED KILLED,” telegram

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to those in the Public Domain, the National Library of Australia, the UK National Archives, Bob Brown, the Queenslander, SADSM and those of unknown copyright.

An air hostess calmly walked through the crashing airliner telling the passengers, “Please fasten your safety-belts. Keep your seats.” Then she returned to the galley near the tail, sat herself down… and waited. One of the passengers had seen oil spurting from an engine and on the flight deck, Captain Anderson was nursing his aircraft in. The engine had failed not long after takeoff following that massive oil leak and this aircraft didn’t have a good reputation for single engined flying.

An Airwork Viking

The Nene powered Viking

The BEA Viking that survived a bomb explosion intended to bring the aircraft down

Airwork employed a number of Vikings that flew as far afield as South Africa

The aftermath of the crash

Air Hostess Beryl Rothwell

Capt Anderson’s youngest son, Nicholas James

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Norsk Luftfartsmuseum, BAe, the Daily Sketch, the AAIB, UK Gov, Vickers and Ruth AS.

Whilst we are discussing quaint idioms, many of us trust that old American adage, “If it looks good, it’ll fly good” attributed to both Neil Armstrong and Bill Lear and is something that all pilots understand. There is something about a fine looking aircraft that makes it appear trustworthy and gives one confidence that it will perform well. Sadly, I know of one company, however, who seem to have looked at their aircraft through bottle bottom glasses… or perhaps they never got the memo.

The Dunne D5

The Type 184

The Cardington Gasbag

The Shorts S38

The Singapore

The Shorts Empire flying boat

The Sunderland

The COW gun

The Sunderland’s internal bomb racks

The Sunderland’s rest facilities

The Bombay

The long legged Stirling

The unlikely looking Seamew

Hurel-Dubois Miles 106 Caravan

The Shorts SC 7 Skyvan

The Shorts SD360

The coolest Skyvan ever… Pink!

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Marinha do Brasil, Short Bros of Cardington, the RAF, Shorts, the Library of Congress, SADSM, George Jackman, the Royal Navy, Adrian Pingstone, Tomás Del Coro and those images orphaned or in the Public Domain.

The aircraft was named ‘Flagship District of Columbia’ and was only the 12th Boeing 707 ever made. It was delivered to American Airlines in February 1959 so at the time America was taking its first steps into the void of outer space it was a mere 3 years old. It hadn’t long been out of it’s periodic inspection and with less than 8,000 hours on the airframe N7506A was expected to have a long and productive life ahead… a wish that would be dashed in a few short minutes.

The New York skyline

An American Airlines Boeing 707 at LAX

Changes in apparent span and the effects of sideslip on a swept wing when yawed

The 707 rudder control system

Wreckage from American Airlines flight 514

The Calverton crash still smoking

A New York ticker tape parade

The flight recorder trace from the American One’s final moments

A reconstruction of the track of Flight One

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Jon Proctor, San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives, the Civil Aeronautics Board and Ted Quackenbush.