A tremendous, stupendous Fokker Dr.1 Dreidecker! Slightly larger than my 60" span version (now sadly departed).
I took a lot of photos of this beast, so you should check out the album linked in the sidebar at the right. Here it is making a docile approach for landing...
...but believe me it's flight routine was anything but docile! Derek also recorded a video of the routine, but it's 700+ megabytes, so I have to figure out what to do with it.
When a bit of rain began to sprinkle, it was just the ideal moment to adjourn to the RAF Museum, where a great many amazing aircraft were to be found. Photos in the album, but believe me that for every plane you can photograph, there are three that you can't.
But I came to this museum to see two aircraft in particular:
The English Electric Lightning! Hanging vertically, because this Cold-War interceptor was known for climbing vertically to intercept the Russian Tupolev bombers flying down into British airspace.
You used to be able to fly to South Africa and pay to fly in in one of these. Mach two for the civilian. I tried to book in 2010, but they had ceased opertion 8 months before.
Damnit!
And the amazing TSR-2
A 1960s design with amazing specifications, that was revolutionary in many ways. The design was far advanced and prototypes were flying. Unfortunately, 1964 election politics saw it declared as too costly by the Labour Party, who promised to cancel the programme and buy Americal F-111 Aardvarks instead.
The Labour Party won the election, the TSR-2 was cancelled, and Aardvarks were ordered. But the price of the Aardvark rose so much the government had to cancel the order, and pay a cancellation fee higher than the entire estimated price of the TSR-2 programme! So the Labour Party saved money for the tax-payer by paying more money to the Americans, in exchange for no aeroplanes at all!
Thank you, Denis Healey!
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