Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 206 total)
  • BBC Cold War season
  • eddiebaby
    Free Member

    Yee haaa! One for iPlayer.
    Used to have a lodger from Upper Heyford and one from Craughton.
    Lots of beer related interest.
    I used to commute to the magazine via Heyford and when Dessert Storm was served up they closwed the pub
    Road through the base until tjhw legality of this was questioned. The next day my van of toys and I went through with me in full Arabic dress courteswy of test trips put to the Sinai /over the last ten years.

    zokes
    Free Member

    I think this may be worth paying my subscription to my proxy so I can watch I player this month …

    Unless anyone has a means of sharing the episodes?

    tumnurkoz
    Free Member

    Uktv everywhere, works brilliantly @zokes, pm me 🙂

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
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    Rockhopper
    Free Member

    Zokes, they will most likely be on pirate day in a few days.

    eddiebaby
    Free Member

    Brilliant show. Can’t wait for next week.

    Rockhopper
    Free Member

    Infact its already on there – downloading it now 🙂

    zokes
    Free Member

    Thanking you. Is there a BBC website with at least the names and an overview of each episode? Might make it easier to prod the more nefarious/liberal corners of the internet in the right direction if I know the correct search terms!

    winston_dog
    Free Member

    zokes – [/url]

    P20
    Full Member

    Bit OT, but the Vulcan is on bombing the Falklands 1600(now) More4

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    You guys should look into doing the tour of Upper Heyford.
    A mate did it, loads of great stuff, the highlights being, a state of alert light that indicates total global annihilation, as well as nuclear bombs listed on the wall. They always swore there were no nukes.

    I grew up less than ten miles away. F1-11s were a multi-flight a day occurrence. Boy they were loud!

    Used to see lots of Hercs and very rarely the rumble of a flying fortress. Especially the night they flew to bomb Libya.

    Local farmer painted a CND symbol on the roof of one of his barns 🙂

    doh
    Free Member

    Used to see lots of Hercs and very rarely the rumble of a flying fortress. Especially the night they flew to bomb Libya.

    flying fortress. eh?

    tinybits
    Free Member

    I assume that’s a B52 (but could be a B1)

    tinybits
    Free Member

    I watched the cold war jets last night, amazing seeing those 1950’s planes batting about. Would love a go in a Jet Provost, and the Comet, wow how beautiful. Looking forward to the next installment with the V-bombers, the USSR long range bombers and I assume the interceptors…

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    Would love a go in a Jet Provost

    My father flew JPs for many a year. My lottery winning shed will have a JP in it. A working one, too.

    Two seater, perfect for a weekend getaway plane! 🙂

    Tonight looks good – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hy7k8
    Red Dawn

    Historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us back to the strange years of the Cold War. For Sandbrook these are the years in which we were both more secure and prosperous that we had ever been – and at the same time, lived everyday with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation. This is not just a story of the superpower arms race or daring spies, real and fictional, it is a story in which all we played a crucial part.

    In the first episode, Dominic brings his trademark mix of great archive and surprising storytelling to the first chilling years of the conflict, when we realised our democracy was facing a new totalitarian enemy: Soviet communism.

    crashtestmonkey
    Free Member

    excellent programme.

    Used to see lots of Hercs and very rarely the rumble of a flying fortress. Especially the night they flew to bomb Libya

    Really?

    http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/boeing/b17.page

    maybe you meant the stratofortess aka B52?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress

    Always loved them since being totally awed and dwarfed by the one at Duxford as a 12yr old.

    tinybits
    Free Member

    Or, as my post above says 😉

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_B-1_Lancer

    Ro5ey
    Free Member

    I watched Apocalypse Now sitting under the wing of Duxford’s B52 … It was a Stella “Screen” Artois promotional thingy…. Really was a very good night, had an interval half way through the rather long film for hot dogs and bottles of Stella as we wonder around the museum for 20min looking at all the aircraft that were in the movie … Phatoms, Hueys etc

    Anyone else get a sense from that program Friday night, that it was the US that were the aggressors in the cold war… certainly in the spook plane dept anyway…. Guessing the Russian used cheap people on the ground as opposed to expensive planes… (see earlier posts)

    crashtestmonkey
    Free Member

    Tiny, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that the B52 at least uses the word ‘Fortress’ in the name… We used upper heyford all the time at work, I’ve spun a V6 Carlton on the main runway 😀

    TheWrongTrousers
    Full Member

    It was the F111s that went to Libya, not the B52s or B1s, or even B17s

    dannyh
    Free Member

    The Wrong Trousers is correct – F111’s did the Libyan raid in 86(?)

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    There’s something missing from this thread…

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    Fixed it…

    tumnurkoz
    Free Member

    Yay!

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    *toasts his marshmallows on the afterburner*

    crashtestmonkey
    Free Member

    Upper heyford was an F1-11 base before it became storage for unsold cars… The hardened shelters are quite funky and I think much of it has listed status which has controlled residential redevelopment.

    vinnyeh
    Full Member

    Didn’t understand from the program why the Americans had to use British pilots for some of the spy plane flights, and why the British took the duty on.

    doh
    Free Member

    the brits got to kiss ass by providing some sort of deniability to the yanks. i’m sure we also got some nice photos out of it.

    TheWrongTrousers
    Full Member

    Presumably those U2s piloted by the RAF still carried US markings and not RAF markings, like those RB45s did ?
    Not so easily deniable for the US if that was the case.
    The U2s were actually a CIA asset at the time rather than USAF. All of the US pilots were actually CIA too (officially).

    This was in the era where the US didn’t trust the UK, they had taken all of their (nuclear) toys away after a succession of spy scandals in the UK had resulted in all of the secrets crossing the iron curtain. The UK were desparate to get back in the US’ good books, so I suspect there was plenty of ass-kissing opportunities that weren’t overlooked.

    doh
    Free Member

    RAF markings IIRC and they obviously trusted us enough to play with one of their very secret toys.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Looks like they removed the stars and stripes stickers… 😉

    vinnyeh
    Full Member

    Still don’t understand why the Americans didn’t want to fly their own planes. Presumably they were more concerned about the potential loss of technology than a dead American pilot so don’t understand what they gained by putting an Englander in the cockpit.

    TheWrongTrousers
    Full Member

    No, they weren’t black in the 60s, that was applied later. I believe they were left in polished aluminium. That photo is much more recent.

    TheWrongTrousers
    Full Member

    And they used to have USAF markings and ‘Stars and Bars’

    doh
    Free Member

    just read a wee bit more about it, effectively Eisenhower was getting more nervous about it and the CIA managed to sidestep the issue of getting his permission for overflights by employing brit pilots and then getting MacMillan to approve them.

    prob just as much for deniability to his own side if anything happened.

    doh
    Free Member

    as a sidenote these planes where anything but secret to the USSR they could see them clearly just couldn’t reach out and touch them for a while at least, the US is happy to release pretty much all of the U2 material but the UK is blocking most of it and refusing to comment.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Lightning’s are bonkers things.

    “Test pilot George Aird ejected from his English Electric Lightning F1 aircraft at a fantastically low altitude in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

    “George was a test pilot with the De Havilland Aircraft. He was on finals for an emergency landing following a fire about 15 miles from Hatfield. At about 10 seconds from touchdown, at about 100 ft, the aircraft suddenly pitched nose up and, since there was no response to the controls, he ejected. The aircraft crashed on the airfield, broke up and caught fire.”

    George landed in a greenhouse sustaining several fractures. The hole where George and the ejection seat went through the glass roof can be seen in the above picture in the near end of the roof of the second greenhouse from the left. They landed in adjoining rows of tomatoes! The damage at the far end of the greenhouse was made by the arrival of the Lightning canopy. The remains of the Lightning can be seen on the left just into the airfield. George was back flying again within six months and on Lightnings a year after the accident.

    ninfan
    Free Member

    Pah, RAF use of the U2 – just a PR exercise because they didn’t want to give away the max altitude of the mighty Canberra 😉

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Ohh, now having some great fun…As well as Vulcan’s at Grandad’s house at the end of Waddington runway, I also remember a holiday in Suffolk as a kid, with these things going over at tree height. Not a ‘cool’ plane, but amazing things.



    And can I go on to a favourite? Mainly because one had a problem and landed in the fields behind our house in Cumbria, on way into Warcop ranges…and then took off again after they fixed the thing. 8)

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    PJM, see page two for the most orsum Lightning pictue you may ever see!

    Awesome planes.

    TheWrongTrousers
    Full Member

    The Phantom ? NOT cool ??
    I’m sorry Sir, but I’m going to need to ask you to step outside
    🙂

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 206 total)

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