Flying ‘Round the Egg
Podcast (pt): Download
A little lesson in basic combat manoeuvres for the budding Phantom pilot.
Death of a Pilot
Podcast (pt): Download
The year was 1976 and, for the RAF, it wasn’t a good year and it wasn’t a bad year. However, in that year the RAF lost 43 aircraft and 27 personnel, one of which was a fellow student.
Tsar Bomba
Podcast (pt): Download
Major Andrei Durnovtsev was about to get airborne in his TU95 Bear. Hanging from the white painted aircraft was a 27 Ton monster, the largest nuclear bomb ever devised. It was so vast that he didn’t even know if he would survive the explosion when he delivered the Tsar Bomba.
The site of the detonation.
The Tsar Bomba’s fireball which reached 5 miles in diameter.
The mushroom cloud of the Tsar Bomba the crown of which reached 45 miles up into the atmosphere.
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Croquant, Minatom, SA3.0 and atomicforum.com
Eric “Winkle” Brown
Podcast (pt): Download
A tribute to one of the most remarkable pilots who ever lived. Qualified on 487 types of aircraft he also completed an unmatched 2,407 carrier deck landing… a record that is never likely to be bested.
Taffy Holden’s Lightning
Podcast (pt): Download
The RAF Wing Commander who flew a Lightning jet fighter. An unremarkable event except for the fact that he wasn’t a pilot!
Taffy Holden’s Mk1A Lightning XM135 can be seen at the Duxford Aircraft Museum in Cambridgeshire in the UK.
Who Was Joe Gilmore?
Podcast (pt): Download
The Moonwalker and Joe Gilmore.
The story of how a barman from a London Hotel become involved in the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon?
1 measure of grapefruit juice
1 measure of Grand Marina
2 dashes of rose water
Shaken well and drained into a wine glass which was then filled with champagne
