Branch Secretary : Alan V. J. Eley
Space Shuttle passes low over several US landmarks
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- The last resting-place for the 4 remaining Space Shuttles
- Discovery
- A very important anniversary
- Preservation news
- Nimrod MR.2 XV235
- Military news - The first entry of students to fly the RAF’s new Hawk Trainer T.2 began their training with 4 ® Sqn, part of 4 Flying Training School at RAF Valley on Anglesey on 2
- The Royal Australian Air Force is to buy a sixth C-17A
- Canada is having ‘cold feet’ about its share in the JSF project
- Three Chinook HC.4s have now been delivered to RAF Odiham
- Boeing has delivered the first of a planned 117 P-8A Poseidon maritime-patrol aircraft to the US Navy
- Bravest of the Brave Group Captain John Cunningham
Space Shuttle passes low over several US landmarksNASA's 747-123 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) N905NA with Space Shuttle Discovery mounted on top flew approximately 1,500 feet above various parts of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area on 17th April. The flight was scheduled to occur between 10 and 11 a.m. EDT. With a Northrop T-38 in attendance to film the historic flight over the capital, the combination 747 + Shuttle aircraft flew near a variety of landmarks in the metropolitan area, including the National Mall, Reagan National Airport, National Harbour and the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, where the Shuttle will be on show in a short while. When the flyover was complete, the SCA landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia for its valuable load to be transferred to the National Air and Space Museum, to begin its new mission to commemorate past achievements in space and to educate and inspire future generations of explorers. Since its first mission into space in 1984, the Space Shuttle Discovery has completed 39 missions, spent 365 days in space, orbited the Earth 5,830 times and travelled 148,221,675 miles. This was the 747’s 806th flight in NASA hands. Delivered to American Airlines in October 1970 as N9668, it was sold off to NASA in July 1974 to be converted to carry the Space Shuttles around the USA, most especially from the landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, California to the launch site at Cape Kennedy for a further mission. This was the aircraft that carried ‘Enterprise’ to the Paris Air Show in 1983 and then carried out a series of flypasts over British airports. After just one more flight delivering the Space Shuttle Atlantis to Los Angeles sometime in May, the veteran 747 is to be retired at Palmdale, California.
(Challenger was lost on 28/ 1/ 1986 and Columbia on 1/ 2/ 2003) Atlantis : (Flew the last Space Shuttle mission in July 2011) The Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Discovery : The Udvar-Hazy Centre of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington. Endeavour : (Built in 1991 as a replacement for Challenger) The California Science Centre, Los Angeles. Enterprise : (This was the Atmospheric Test Vehicle used for drop tests in the Earth’s atmosphere after being borne aloft by the Boeing 747 carrier aircraft – it was never launched vertically) Previously on display at The Udvar-Hazy Centre of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, but moved in 2012 to the USS Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum New York City.
a balloon squadron (it did not receive any aircraft until August 1914). No 2 Squadron had no antecedents and no aircraft for quite some time. No 3 Squadron was formed at Larkhill from No 2 (Aeroplane) Company and was the first RFC unit to fly heavier than air machines, hence its motto : ‘Tertius Primus Erit’ (the Third shall be First) Preservation news - Top news this month is the discovery in Burma of 20 Griffon-powered Spitfire XIVs still in their transport crates, as delivered from Britain in 1945. With the centre of aerial activity against Japan moving further north and east in early to mid 1945, land-based fighters of the RAF in Burma lacked the range of carrier-based Seafires, Corsairs and Avengers of the Royal Navy as Allied forces swept northwards towards Japan, mopping up Japanese resistance island by island. The Spitfires that have now been discovered deep underground were buried after being waxed, wrapped in greased paper with their joints tarred to prevent decay, according to one report (there could well be others). Over the last few years a Lincolnshire farmer David Cundall has spent £130,000 of his own money and visited Burma 12 times to locate the hidden planes. Now ground radar images of the buried planes confirmed his belief that they could be brought up and some at least restored to airworthiness. His negotiations with the Burmese Government have been greatly helped by the support of British Prime Minister David Cameron on a recent visit to the country and it now seems likely the whole cache of Spitfires will be recovered and brought to Britain for repair and future restoration. To meet the £500,000 cost of excavation, Mr Cundall enlisted the help of Steve Boutltbee Brooks, a commercial property investor who also runs the Boultbee Flight Academy at Goodwood, West Sussex, which reaches people to fly war-birds using a Harvard and a two-seat Spitfire SM520/G-ILDA (that Spitfire was bought for £1.78 million in 2009, giving an idea of the value of the find in Burma !) There are only about 35 airworthy Spitfires in the world, which makes the discovery especially interesting. - The forward fuselage of Nimrod MR.2 XV235 was delivered from RAF Kinloss to Hawker Hunter Aviation at RAF Scampton, Lincs by early March for an undisclosed purpose. - Not all the Harriers at Cottesmore have gone to the USA : ZD461 was delivered to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford by road on 14th March for display ; ZD318 (an early GR.5 development batch airframe used for weapons-loading training at Cottesmore) was transported by road in February a few miles east to Wittering to join the Harrier Heritage Museum that is being set up there ; and ZD465, that was thought to be a candidate for preservation in the Harrier Heritage Museum, has reportedly left Wittering bound for HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy storage depot at Gosport. - At RAF Scampton Hawk T.1 XX253 has been placed on display outside the Red Arrows HQ, alongside the Gnat T.1 XR571. This particular Hawk was involved in a mid-air collision in March 2010 when flown by F/L Dave Montenegro who landed the aircraft safely after a collision above the Mediterranean island of Crete during work-up for the display season. The other Red Arrows Hawk involved XX233 crashed in the sea after its pilot F/L Mike Ling ejected safely. XX253 was badly damaged and declared Category 5 (beyond economic repair) but was brought back to Scampton for spares recovery. It has now been given some cosmetic repair treatment and bears the names of John Egging and Sean Cunningham below the cockpit as a tribute to the two lost comrades. - Sea King HAS.6 XV663 has now been placed on display in the National Maritime Museum at Falmouth after being repainted in a joint Royal Navy and RAF Search and Rescue colour-scheme. - The Sopwith Dolphin C3988 that has been painstakingly rebuilt over many years in the Sir Michael Beetham Memorial Building at RAF Museum Cosford was delivered to the RAF Museum at Hendon on 29th February. Military news - The first entry of students to fly the RAF’s new Hawk Trainer T.2 began their training with 4 ® Sqn, part of 4 Flying Training School at RAF Valley on Anglesey on 2nd April. The first four pilots, who will have already flown the Grob Tutor and Short Tucano, are expected to graduate as fast-jet pilots in 2013. Instruction on the Hawk T.2 will be delivered with a 50:50 mix of live flying and ground simulator use. Compared with the so-called ‘legacy fleet’ of ‘round-dials’ Hawk T.1 aircraft, the T.2 will provide an enhanced training capability, introducing the emulated use of advanced systems including ‘synthetic radar’, electronic-warfare equipment and ‘virtual weapons’. BAE has already delivered all 28 Hawk T.2s on order for the RAF, with excess capacity on the fleet likely to be made available to third-party users from foreign air forces (around a third of the new T.2 fleet is in store at RAF Shawbury, kept in de-humidified hangars). - The Red Arrows will be flying a formation of seven aircraft in the 2012 display season instead of the usual nine Hawk T.1s. Not only have they lost two pilots in accidents in late 2011 (one in a crash after the Bournemouth sea-front display and the other in a tragic ejection-seat accident at Scampton), but the trauma of those two events has led F/L Kirsty Stewart (Kirsty Moore when she became the first female Red Arrow pilot in 2010) to resign from the team. She is to be re-assigned, initially to a ground job. The Reds are planning a full season of displays in spite of the sad events of 2011. - The Royal Australian Air Force is to buy a sixth C-17A Globemaster strategic transport for service in 2013 at a cost of $297 million. This will give the air force much greater flexibility in planning its long-distance missions. - NATO retired the last of three Boeing 707 Trainer Cargo Aircraft on 22nd December 2011 when LX-N20199 flew from its base at Geilenkirchen to Maastricht Airport, Holland for disposal. It had served the NATO AWACS force for 23 years, training crews for the E-3A and taking cargo to operational areas as well as supporting humanitarian relief efforts in such places as Haiti and Pakistan. The last three aircraft were LX-N1997, LX-N20000, and LX-N20199 (two other 707 TCA aircraft served the NATO force in earlier years : they were LX-N19996 which was withdrawn in 1998 and used for spares and LX-N20198 that was withdrawn from use and stored at Naples in 2000). - As Great Britain wavers over the choice of F-35B Joint Strike Fighter with V/STOL capability versus F-35C with old-fashioned catapult-launch and arrester-gear landing for its new aircraft carrier, Canada is having ‘cold feet’ about its share in the JSF project. Being the second-largest country in the world, much of its territory is very remote, so a single-engined fighter may not be the best choice for the Canadian Armed Forces. Also, senior government officials are debating whether to extend the country’s use of the CF-18A/B fleet until around 2023, enabling it to buy the JSF at a lower price after the programme reaches full-rate production. Canada has previously said it intends to buy 65 conventional take-off and landing F-35As for about $9 billion. - Three Chinook HC.4s have now been delivered to RAF Odiham from the Fleetlands Repair and Maintenance depot near Portsmouth. One is for ground-crew training, the other two have been doing pre-acceptance checks since December, leading to IOC (initial operational capability) status being achieved during April. Three more upgraded HC.4 Chinooks are already undergoing flight-test at Boscombe Down and a further three are at Fleetlands undergoing the conversion process. Involving Boeing, Qinetiq and Thales, the HC.4 upgrade involves replacing the analogue cockpit instruments of the HC.2/ HC.2A/ HC.3 with digital displays and the fleet-wide deployment of more powerful Honeywell T55-714 engines on an eventual 46 Chinooks of the earlier marks. - Boeing has delivered the first of a planned 117 P-8A Poseidon maritime-patrol aircraft to the US Navy, with the type due to be declared operational next year. The first aircraft for the USN was flown from Seattle to Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida on 4th March. Six previous flight-test examples are being tested by service pilots at the Patuxent River flight-test centre in Maryland and Boeing also built two airframes for ground testing. The large number of prototype/pre-production aircraft is evidence of Boeing’s serious wish to replace all the P-3 Orions serving with air forces and navies worldwide. Bravest of the Brave Group Captain John Cunningham This is a long overdue tribute to one of Great Britain’s greatest wartime heroes and a consummate test-pilot, maybe the most unflappable of all. His name is forever linked with the De Havilland Comet jet airliner, which he took up on its maiden flight in 1949, flew on numerous test-flights and demonstrated to the public at the Farnborough Air Show for many years. Born in Surrey in July 1917, John Cunningham loved flying from the moment he went up for a joyride in an Avro 504 biplane at the age of nine. He went to Whitgift School, which was close to Croydon Airport and he often cycled to the airport from his home to see Lufthansa’s corrugated-metal Junkers, the Fokker airliners of KLM, Handley pages of Imperial Airways, Air France Wibaults and various De Havilland Moths and Avro 504s. John was not a sportsman or team player, preferring the model-aeroplanes that he made in an after-school club. He was a member of the school’s Officer Training Corps and became familiar with service life when on training exercises with the OTC. Wanting to do some work with aeroplanes on leaving school at 18, he rejected the idea of further study at university in favour of an apprenticeship scheme at the De Havilland Aircraft Company at Hatfield. He left home in 1935 and lived with other apprentices in a specially-built block of flats near the airfield and factory. John was one of several young apprentices to be selected by Captain de Havilland to help in the production of the DH.94 Moth Minor. He was also able to gain invaluable experience by working on the DH Technical School’s own T.K. 2 monoplane project. Constructing a prototype aircraft was John’s boyhood dream and the aeroplane flew well, winning a race at 190 mph, on the sole power of a 140 hp DH Gipsy Major. John Cunningham’s military career really began when he was accepted to fill a vacancy in 604 (County of Middlesex) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, based at Hendon. The unit had just swapped its Westland Wapitis for much sleeker and faster Hawker Demon two-seat biplanes. It was at this time that John palled up with a diminutive air-gunner named Jimmy Rawnsley. Little did they know at that time that they would share a partnership for eight action-packed years, the boyish young Pilot Officer of 19 and the rather older Leading Aircraftsman of 33 who had trained as an engine fitter. Other members of the squadron noted John’s quiet determination and a steadfast gaze that showed he was more than just a casual weekend flier. He continued to fly with 604 Squadron whenever possible, but in April 1938 came John’s big break, when he was invited to join the small band of de Havilland test-pilots, checking and test-flying aircraft as they emerged from the factory. The company’s production sheds at Hatfield were turning out Tiger Moths, Queen Bees, Rapides and Oxfords and just about to be taking the air were the DH.91 Albatross and DH.95 Flamingo. Captain Geoffrey de Havilland’s eldest son (also called Geoffrey) had just taken over as Chief Test Pilot following the death in an accident of Bob Wright. The only other test-pilots available were George Gibbins and Guy Tucker, so another pair of hands was invaluable. The company had made a wise choice : John Cunningham was to be a test-pilot for de Havilland (and its successors Airco and British Aerospace) until he retired in 1980. A year after joining the flight test-team, John had his first aircraft accident when flying as ballast for Geoffrey de Havilland Junior in a Moth Minor, to carry out spinning tests. They were both obliged to bale out when the aircraft lost power and went into a flat spin. Collecting his thoughts after a rather firm landing near the burning wreckage, John calmly got out his pocket camera and photographed what remained of his aircraft ! On his recommendation the DH.94 Moth Minor design was given extra rudder area, increased rudder travel and a couple of anti-spin strakes on the rear-fuselage, as had been done on the Tiger Moth. The aircraft then flew a lot better and 71 were built at Hatfield. The Munich crisis of mid 1938 was a wake-up call for the nation, with military units put on alert, the shiny Hawker Demons of 604 Sqn being quickly painted in green and brown camouflage. A few months later, in December 1938, Blenheim Mark IFs were delivered to replace the dainty day-fighters : these were slow and lumbering in comparison. Pilots wondered how they were expected to hunt down night raiders over the UK. They carried a gun-pack of four machine-guns where the bomb-bay was, but no radar or other devices to help them track down the enemy. Although test-flying would become a vital wartime activity, John had no hesitation in going to war with his squadron when the call came. His view was that 604 Sqn had taught him to fly and he thought he would be more useful as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF than as a junior test-pilot at de Havillands flight-testing Tiger Moths. His squadron was sent from Hendon with its comfortable housing and Officers Mess to tented accommodation at North Weald. On night-time operations neither the Blenheims nor the flying-suits were heated, so they found long patrols over the North Sea were most uncomfortable and unproductive. Sometimes they caught sight of a German aircraft in a searchlight beam and flew quickly to intercept it, all too often in vain. They had no homing beacons, no system of blind approach and no way in which they could be talked down to a safe landing. The accident rate was alarmingly high. The deadliest enemy they came up against was ‘the dreaded Isaac’ named after Sir Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravity. John was pleased when he heard of experiments with an airborne radio-location device (soon to be called radar). In January 1940 he was tasked with flying a long-nosed Blenheim IV P4847 which carried the first purpose-designed Airborne Interception radar set ever installed in an aircraft. 604 Sqn moved from one base to another as the hectic months of 1940 went by, going from North Weald to Northolt, then Manston, Gravesend and finally Middle Wallop in July : this was to become their base for the next few years. The airfield became a hive of activity during the Battle of Britain : Spitfires and Hurricanes by day and Blenheims by night. The Blenheims were gradually being fitted with so-called ‘magic boxes’ that would eventually lead to successful interceptions of enemy aircraft in all weathers. John Cunningham was determined to make radar-equipped night-fighters work properly. He pointed out : “You were at war. Night fighting was a highly specialised game. You had to have an inner strength and determination. It had to be made to work, and we had to be the ones to master it and get it to work.” In September 1940 at around the climax of the Battle of Britain came news that the squadron was to receive a new night-fighter, the massive and formidable Bristol Beaufighter. About this time John was promoted to Squadron Leader and made a Flight Commander of B flight. A problem with the gun-sights was solved when John went to RAE Farnborough and explained the difficulties experienced by his squadron. A young ‘boffin’ called A.A. Hall (later to become Sir Arnold Hall, head of the RAE and later still Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group) soon came up with a solution, and from then on John had more and more contact with the scientists who were building the AI sets, also the ground controllers who had to bring the British night-fighters within close range of any German planes. Cunningham had an amazingly good radar-operator in his former air-gunner Jimmy Rawnsley, who had retrained for airborne navigation and radar work, although he found tracking an enemy aircraft on his screen an almost impossible task at first. After much practice, the combination of his skill in interpreting blips on the screen and Cunningham’s endless patience and flying ability in all weather conditions helped them to become the leading night-fighter team in the RAF, despite their differing ages and backgrounds (John was actually accompanied by another operator in his first three night interceptions : he opened his score by shooting down a Junkers 88 on the night of 19th November 1940). Once they were together as a team, John and Jimmy stayed together for most of WWII, bringing down 20 e/a, plus 3 probables and 6 damaged, which included fast and elusive FW190s and Me410s, the latter equipped with a tail-warning radar device called Neptungerät. 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