February 3rd 1963. Here is XP831 on the deck of HMS Ark Royal after Hawker Test Pilot Bill Bedford had completed the deck landing. This was the first ever vertical landing of a fixed wing aircraft on an aircraft carrier and the last of significant milestones in the proving the prototype’s potential. 3 months later XP831 would crash at the Paris Airshow.
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It was late in a sunny warm Sunday afternoon in August 1978.
XZ450 just at start up for the first Sea Harrier flight at Dunsfold. the photo was taken by Dunsfold Photographic Dept. John Farley is in the cockpit, Trevor Davies is sitting on the ground and I’m standing with the cine camera.
Dick Poole, formerly of Dunsfold Flight Test Department
Continue readingSearching for more information on the operations of 180 Squadron I chanced upon an obscure reel of unedited film shot by the RAF Film Unit. It sits in the Imperial War Museum archive and it is poorly labelled, dated 1944, without specifics of the content. However certain sequences are unmistakably Dunsfold in the very early years of operations. There is a sequence of bomb loading crew working on Mitchell B-25s and followed a sequence of landing filmed from the bomb aimers seat of a Mitchell. The aircraft approaches from the South-East banking to align with the main runway. The newly built A281 and truncated fields are below and the Dunsfold aerodrome technical areas are seen to the North. Blackdown Hill is in the far distance. Most significant is the give-away “experimental” runway part built parallel to the main run way. This has previously only been seen in distant aerial photographs.
We have taken the raw footage and re-edited into a coherent piece, perhaps as originally intended when the photographer shot the material.
Whilst most of the scenes look to be Dunsfold the air to air scenes look to be the South Coast with a group of Mitchells seen over Ovingdean heading East, an unidentified kinked coastline, and then returning over the Seven Sisters.
Aircraft that are seen include Serial no. FW184 Mitchell II – this aircraft was lost in France on 11th June 1944 and FL207, lost in 1943.
98 Squadron were posted to Dunsfold in August 1943 to take part in pre-invasion attacks on Northern France and on V1 launch sites in the Pas-de-Calais. After the Normandy landings the Squadron operated in close support of the advancing Allied armies, and from October 1944 was based at Melsbroek in Belgium, moving to Achmer, Germany just days prior to VE Day.
The Squadron was equipped with Mitchells at RAF West Raynham It then flew its first raid from RAF Foulsham and suffered heavy losses including the aircraft of the squadron commander. After supporting the breakout from the Normandy beachhead in June 1944, the squadron re-located to Melbroek. It supported the allied advance across Europe and from April 1945 it operated from Achmer, Germany.
320 Squadron (Dutch) had a NO code and orange inverted triangle marked beneath the cockpit.
On 30 March 1943, the squadron moved to RAF Attlebridge then was reassigned to Second Tactical Air Force on 1 June with the squadron attacking enemy communications targets and airfields. The squadron relocated to RAF Lasham on 30 August and to RAF Dunsfold on 18 February 1944. From these airfields the squadron participated in many ” Ramrod” and “Noball” operations and bombing attacks on construction works, railway yards, fuel dumps and V-1 Flying Bomb sites in the North of France, in advance of Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944 (D-Day).
After D-Day the bombing of tactical targets continued and changed from France to the Dutch coast of Zeeland, and in September 1944 the squadron was involved in bombing German troops in the surroundings of Arnhem. In September the squadron started bombing targets in Germany along the Rhine for the advancing allied troops. In October 1944 the squadron was transferred to Melsbroek in Belgium. From there the bombing of bridges and airfields in the east of the Netherlands and Germany continued. During 1943 and 1944 the squadron took heavy losses. On 30 April 1945 the squadron moved to Advanced Landing Ground B.110 at Achmer, Lower Saxony in Germany.
All three squadrons were part of ip加速器破解.
You can find the 14 minutes of original footage film here.http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060021114
This is a curious piece of propaganda, “Train Busting Mustangs” – a Pathe newsreel. Whilst not identified this film is dated 1943 and noting the names and aircraft serials it appears to feature Mustang I’s of 400 Squadron. 400 Sqdn. had their Tomahawks replaced with Mustangs in July 1942. Whilst the gun-camera footage looks to be from a variety of different sources, some of the ground scenes look to be Dunsfold.
Two notable names are Flight Officers “Bitsy” Grant and J Morton:
MORTON, F/L John Alexander (J7451) – Distinguished Flying Cross – No.400 Squadron
GRANT, F/O Duncan Marshall (J5982) – Distinguished Flying Cross – No.400 Squadron
Former Dunsfold Chief Test Pilot ip加速器破解 presentation of his story of the Harrier development from 1951 to 2015. This hour long presentation is a unique insight into the early development of the “jump jet” and the evolution of Hawker’s prototypes P.1127 to the Harrier as a military aircraft. This recording was made by the Brooklands Museum Trust in 2015.
Video Copyright Brooklands Museum Trust ©2015 (digitally remastered 2020) The original slightly longer video is here.
The Harrier story – transcript of 2015 presentation
Now the Harrier story goes back to 1951 and the meeting at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Now 1951 is a long time ago. I mean that’s 64 years, isn’t it? And to try and get ourselves in the sort of mindset to thinking how long ago that was. It was two years later that our queen came to the throne. It was two years before Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing wandered up Everest and it was two years before the Supreme allied commander in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower now became president of the United States. That’s a long time ago. It’s also one year after I started my engineering apprenticeship at the Royal aircraft establishment. Now in those days, the main gate looked like that. And in the evening, this is the sort of thing you saw, people went to work on their feet in buses or on bikes. There were very, very few cars and indeed the number of bike sheds that Farnborough was astonishing.
Continue readingAll with swept wings and larger tail than the P.1127s
The evolution of the Harrier from prototype to the last variants has generated press interest from the early 60’s onwards. Pathe Newsreels visited Dunsfold on a regular basis to tell the story.
Warbirds Magazine reports the “return home” of the crash damaged Kestrel XS694 that has been languishing in the USA for many years. But the question is – coming home to where? The Wings Museum, who bought the airframe some years ago, are based in Balcombe Sussex and don’t have space in their agricultural building that is packed with their current display artefacts. The Warbirds report skirts over the huge elephant in the room that Wings Museum have plans to build a 10,000sqm warehouse to the South of Dunsfold aerodrome as part of their ambitious plans to move their museum from Sussex to Dunsfold.
A restored Kestrel would make an excellent centre piece to this new museum, but with supporters being asked for donations to help with the restoration it begs the question: what about the money earmarked to construct the new Museum? Professional estimates indicate there will be little change out of £10m to build the museum – and that’s without factoring in the operating costs. Half of the proposed museum space is destined to be telling the Dunsfold Story but so far the Kestrel appears to be the only item in their catalogue that has any link with Dunsfold.
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