| Fabulous
Farnborough!
  Surely
not? Not something that one would normally say about the modern day
Farnborough shows, with the predominance of bizjets and same 'new'
military types making perhaps their third or fourth appearances before
entering service...But this is exactly forty years ago, back in the
good ol' days when the British aircraft industry was at its zenith,
producing a myriad of new types every year for each first September
week to debut. Maybe there is an element of rose tinted spectacles,
but who wouldn't turn the clock back...
A series of previously unpublished pictures has come to
light of that halcyon year, illustrating what a rich crop of aircraft were on display, all
of them emanating from British factories. The fact that a mere ten years later most of the
companies would have been absorbed into the new British Aircraft Corporation, and it would
only be sixteen years until the multi-national Panavia Tornado venture would signal that
international co-operation would be the only way in which Great Britain would be able to
build future military aeroplanes...All pictures courtesy of John Robinson.
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Bloodhound missile, the latest in air defence |
Buccaneer S1, the
Navy's latest strike aircraft |
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The 'Black Arrows' display team |
Folland's Gnat,
entering service with the RAF |
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Gloster Javelin, the RAF's main interceptor of
the time |
English Electric
P1B, forerunner of the Lightning |
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Short SC1 VSTOL demonstration aircraft |
Hunter T7 of the
'Black Arrows' |
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Vulcan B2 XH483 |
Jet Provosts |
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Argosy, the 'Whistling Wheelbarrow' |
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