The Vickers VC10

The Mrs Gruff and I have very recently moved to a new address, which is close to Warton Aerodrome and lies almost under its flight path. All sorts of things fly in and out of there and as I type an RAF VC10 is making low level circuits. It's distinctive (and 'distinguished'), relatively quiet and extremely elegant; in every way a very English aeroplane. The sight and sound of it evoke memories of seeing the BOAC Cunard VC10s on the apron at Heathrow in the mid sixties and every pass raises goose pimples and sends a shiver down my spine, even my hair stands on end. A schoolboy thrill I'm not at all embarrassed to admit to.

I have several memories of London airport from that decade, the first of which is of watching the BOAC Bristol Britannia carrying my father back from Trinidad land, in about 1960/1, before the Queen Elizabeth terminal was built. Only a line of portable barriers separated the public from the runway but in those days nothing else was necessary. At about that period he took me with him to collect an item from the cargo sheds on the far side of the airport. It was night-time, although probably not late, and I can still clearly recall seeing a brightly lit, strangely curving green house seemingly perched in the air somewhere ahead and above me. At that time I had not seen a Boeing Stratofreighter and the sight was very much a wonder.

With friends and relatives in various parts of the world, my father was often at London Airport and I always looked forward to going there. A sign over the entrance to the road tunnel under the apron announced 'Welcome To Britain' and in those days one could be proud to welcome people to a land that was still of some account in the world, was a decent place in which to live and had not been made into a doss house for the scum of the Earth in which no crime is so awful that one might be asked to leave.

It's delightful to see an aircraft almost as old as myself still giving good service, unlike myself, but I cannot help thinking that like myself and the Britain I was once proud to live in, it is very much a thing of the past.

There's a link to a web-site devoted to the TSR2 in my blogroll. Somewhere in the tangle of faulty memory, heresay, sloppy journalism, misinformation, corrupted accounts, spiteful diaries, shredded documents, secrecy rules, outright lies, misleading autobiographies, dust, worms, concealed truths and unheard voices lies an illuminating doctoral thesis on the decline of the 'British' aircraft industry. Someone, someday, will write it.