Farnborough Air Show 1950

[TheHarold2010]

exelent!!!

[cybermarsactual]

This must have been the best air show ever.

[WinchesterRanger]

That was back when it was actually pleasant to live in the UK, and we had freedom of speech. Not any more.

[robinoi]

Brabazon, it was so ...

[edj66]

Off to see how deluded the newsreels were about the actual state of the British Aircraft industry. An exciting time to be alive I expect, but ultimately the Indian Summer of great British planes. The last was the Harrier.

[authommo]

Simply awesome. Thanks so much for the upload.

[mcfurley]

i love how funny the people talked back then... great footage though!

[pacificbound67]

:47, Viscount turbo jet aircraft.....LOL

[artieroo]

Whatever happened to the once thriving British air industry? It's such a shame to see these images 60 years later.

[klesmer]

@artieroo Very simple-socialism + labor unions.

[donnyab]

@klesmer

no actually its simpler than that => the Comet.

[klesmer]

@donnyab It certainly didn't help. Even after they cured the stuctural problems the Comet was too small and too slow to compete with the 707 and what came later.

[Reichenback09]

Used to attend Farnborough air shows regularly as a kid. Love the newsreel commentary of the day. One I missed was when John Derry was killed doing a tight turn in an early DH-110 - prompted new safety regulations. Nice to see the Tudor/Ashton - nice plane but not commercially viable with so many DC-3/C-47s still available for a song.

[Reichenback09]

Used to attend Farnborough air shows regularly as a kid. Love the newsreel commentary of the day. One I missed was when John Derry was killed doing a tight turn in an early DH-110 - prompted new safety regulations.

[Wookierabbit]

Groucho @ 1:09  :D

[Greenhornet270]

GREAT Posts!!!! USAF vet here...saw alot of these planes in person...

[spyderz1303]

What is the plane at 2:51?

[ebutemetube]

@spyderz1303 It's a Mark 1, WB490.

[YARROWS]

O how things have changed.Britain showing of its Engineering greatness it was the same with the car industry.

[KeiichiTsuchiyadrift]

I liek the one ware the two planes were stuck together haveing sex. It make me laugh until snot bubbled out my nose!!

[madisonelectronic]

Comet, nuff said.

[Cashpotty]

Those aircraft were flying about 10 feet above the old hotel in Farnborough! Never get away with that these days.

[otoya2006]

gloster meteor: the ugliest aircraft ever built

[Darbyjack]

Gloster Meteor fuck yeah

[woppy73]

He xoio - its a Avro Ashton

[xoio]

2:03 - What aircraft is that!?? - looks like a prop airframe retro fitted with 4 jets?

[ESTEBEVERDE]

British Accents are so Fey!!! :-D

Great Video!!!

[juzzi07]

ah they opened with a Beverley. Wonderful stuff from an era i wished i lived in...for the aviation alone!

[terl47]

Not only opened with a Bev but closed with it as well.

I did live in that era and I think I would have changed places with you when I flew to Labuan from UK in a Bev..... that was a L O N G NOISY trip!!

[aeomaster32]

Thank you for all the wonderful footage. What a surprise to see the Avro Jet Liner. All that is left now is the nose section.

[Gruntol5]

aeomaster:  There is no Avro Jetliner here. It's an Avro Ashton. The Farnborough Airshow was only open to British built aircraft in those days. The Jetliner was Canadian.

[dogsvomit2]

What fantastic content. Before I was injured I was a photographer, and I had the time of my life at Oshkosh(1990). Thank you.

[problem49]

Great stuff. The Avro jetliner was a Canadian jet airliner that actually pre-dated the Comet. I had no idea that was ever displayed at Farnborough.

[Gruntol5]

problem49: " had no idea that was ever displayed at Farnborough." It wasn't! See above and below.

[gizmogadsby]

These are great videos you have posted. The history is priceless!

[CaptBubble]

Lovely film, interesting era. Nice too not to have American music plastered over it!

[Gruntol5]

Note:

1) 1 of only 2 Armstrong Whitworth Apollos at 3.14, behind the Beverley. Lost out to the superior Vickers Viscount.

2) Vickers Viking in foreground at 4.09 and Airspeed Ambassador next to it.

3) Supermarine Type 535 (forerunner to the Swift)at 4.17. The Swift briefly held world's airspeed record at 735 mph.

Those were the days! I was there in '52. Hunter, Swift and DH-110 intentionally aimed supersonic bangs at the spectators. Bloody marvellous.

[ijolite]

Bettya that's a Varsity at 4:09 - tricycle undercart.

Until I read Wikipedia on the Avro Ashton (at your suggestion, below) I thought the

6-engined plane in the film "Cone of Silence" was a studio embellishment of it rather than a flying engine testbed.

I hope weren't there in '52 on the day John Derry (1:09) was killed in the DH110.

[Gruntol5]

You are quite correct - it's a Varsity. Viking was a tail sitter. I had 5 trips to Malta and back in an Eagle Airways Viking - you'd think I would know better - 9 hours of pounding Bristol Hercules just a few feet away from you!

Was the Ashton in "Cone of Silence?" I have never seen it.

I was there on Saturday, the day before DH-110 disintegrated. We heard it on the "wireless" the next day. Very shocking.

[ijolite]

Long ops in a civilianised Wellington!

A sterling engine, but we twice had Hercules failures. One was on a Rome-Heathrow leg in 1951 in a BOAC Hermes. We had to put down in Lyons for a night.

The Theseus-engined Hermes at 2:45 makes a spectacular takeoff for a passenger aircraft in those days, albeit not in airline service.

[Gruntol5]

@ijolite : I finally got to see "Cone of Silence" recently, having bought a copy on eBay - all the way from Australia! It was good to see the Avro Ashton testbed in action, but the idea that a jet airliner would have 2 different types of engine (from different manufacturers) mounted in different ways on the wings is laughable! Anyway - piece of aeronautical history.

[Motoguzzi750]

Pretty much my favourite era for aircraft!

[Gruntol5]

Actually it's an Avro Ashton (Avro type 706). It was developped from the piston-engined Avro Tudor, but had 4 Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojets. There was even a testbed version with 2 Bristol Olympus engines as well (6 engines!). Look it up in wikipedia.

[Bomberguy]

You are correct, thanks! The one I was thinking of had a tail wheel

[spitfireJEJ]

@Gruntol5  And the fuselage of that aeroplane still survives at Newark Aviation Museum in Nottighamshire, England.

[lfstweak420]

Ah ok thanks!

[lfstweak420]

What is that aircraft at 2:06? Looks very odd...

[refats79]

whats the name of the big plane at 0:50 ??

[lfstweak420]

Bristol Brabazon :)

[refats79]

thanks for the quick answer..couldn't understand what the commentator was saying :)

[2471745]

brought back memories of marching down main runway in the PE display two great days

[jonzflicks]

A great pilot was Janusz Zerakowski. His amazing stunt to show off the meteor was to put it in a vertical climb, shut down both engines and at the point of stall, put full thrust on just one engine. The result was a cartwheel. So reveared was he by his adopted country Canada, that they minted a coin with his head and named a space research establishment after him. He was test pilot for the Avro Arrow. Took his kids to school across a lake in a jet powered boat. Bet that impressed their chums!

[Sqdrn1]

in fact he moved from Britain to Avro Canada as he was so p'd off with the attitude of the engineers at Gloster's when he was test piloting the Javelin. From his biography I can't say I blame him.

[Gruntol5]

Ahem - 2 errors by the commentator:

1) The anti-submarine aircraft at 0.57 to 1.03 was a Blackburn YB1, not the Fairey 17 (later called Gannet). The Blackburn submission lost out to the Gannet, an example of which you can see at 3.18.

2) At 0.47, he refers to the Viscount as a turbojet airliner. Turboprop of course.

Damn media people!

[lfstweak420]

About the Viscount: The propellers of the engines are turned by turbojet... Turbojet turning propellers, so you geddit? Although it created a flase impression lol

[TheBourneID]

When I didn't watch for a moment, and then looked back again at 5:07, I thought for a split-second: "Huh, isn't 1950 a bit early for an E-3 Sentry?"

[Alpha126]

This is some awesome footage! Really good to see!

[evilintel]

Nice display by the Blackburn.

[ale1022]

Really good video lovely to see this footage.

[stickmanpig]

britain lead the way in aviation canberra comet concorde to name but a few,no more to be said.

[Gruntol5]

Don't forget Vickers Viscount, BAC 111, Jetstream, Hawk, Harrier, HS-125, Airbus (various)- all of which the yanks bought, because they were the best for the job.

[whizbang47]

You're joking, aren't you? I thought I was watching the Dog Channel for a moment.

[stickmanpig]

your barking up the wrong tree mate.

[spottydog4472]

woof!

[terl47]

This is the only clip I can find anywhere of my favourite aircraft flying. The Beverly ( to be precise the Blackburn Beverly) ( it is the last aircraft to take off on the clip() You have to see it to realise the scale of it. I flew from UK to Labuan in one in 1962. Some trip!! probably explains why I am nearly deaf now!!

Beverly or Vulcan ??? both the best of British in their own ways.

[whizbang47]

Waxing poetic about a fixed-gear 4-engine a/c? Woof? What was that about Westminster? Which cruised faster, the Beverly or the Russian TB-3?

[copewood333]

Fordroad doesn't mention how the American airline industry is struggling against Airbus projects. Every dog has its day. It was the poor Brits who gave you Whittle's jet engine and the poor defeated Germans who gave you supremacy in rocket technology. And don't bother reminding us of the aid you so kindly sent in WWII...we've just finished paying for that. BTW - I think tou meant combat ROLES

[jawajawa350]

Poor old British indeed! If we had run off with billions of dollars worth of Nazi blueprints for advanced aircraft(like the Sabre jet and flying wing) as well as plenty of Nazi engineers, and if someone had given us the first jet engine(as we gave it to the Americans in 1944!)we might have been laughing at you! Oh, and you don't lead the world in combat aircraft today either...I think you'll find a few Russian combat aircraft which out do anything you have...try the SU 37 for size!

[ranchoroncho]

The British have more guts than any other people on earth, the Soviet Union emploded for the same reasons China and India will, the United States of America is down but they sure as fk are not out, big corporations will get theirs in the end, (what goes around comes around), and Islam will weed out the stupid bastards among them, and will never convince thinking human beings worldwide to accept such a cruel dogmatic doctrine. Ya- you are mad, but that because your stupid. Or Canadian.

[jawajawa350]

We need to stop a million stupid immigrants entering the US every year or the US will be down and out and then we will all be sorry!

[RonaldArif]

In my lifetime I have seen the mighty British Empire being reduced to just an Island; the collapse of Soviet Union; the start of the end of America; the Rise of China & India. The emergence of Islam as a global religion and the collapse of big corporations.

[fordroad]

The poor British still hanging on to dreams from yesteryear, although the Canberra Bomber went on to excellent service in combat rolls well into the Vietnam War and beyond.

The RAF and British designers was no match up against the likes of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and the rest. The Americans built them to last and coming from WW2 still lead the world in combat aircraft.

[jawajawa350]

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