Aviation
Aircraft Firefighters’ School based at Stanstead where men and women are trained from around the world. Pictures taken in 1962. Old aircraft were deliberately set ablaze to give crews an opportunity of carrying out realistic training.
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Air Crash Investigator Ken Jones and some of his team photographed at Farnborough in 1967. Dogs are also trained to recover important items of wreckage, such as the Flight Data Recorders (Black Boxes) even from blazing wreckage.
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Concorde under construction at Filton in 1966
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Three of the nicest madmen I ever met belonged to a flying club based at Denham, just outside London. They created a hair-raising game of aerial tag in which the hunter is a pilot in a Tiger Moth and the hunted a human runner. The penalty for being caught was to be ‘blown up’. The potentially deadly game was played by pilot Tony Cheshire, wing walker Brian Lecomber and target Mark Grandis. In the hunt, Mark raced across fields near the airport while being pursued by the bi-plane travelling at 90mph. As it closed on the target, Brian climbed out onto the lower wing and fired one of his rocket bombs. Mark, who wears padded clothing, always managed to dodge the exploding missile. But rocket bombs aside there was always a serious risk of injury as the aircraft’s wheels passed only inches above his head. It would only have taken some bad luck of a moment’s misjudgement for all three of them to have been killed or seriously injured. It was one of the hairiest stunts I ever photographed.
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Giant SRN4 hovercraft under construction on the Isle of Wight in September 1967. The 100-ton machine was to be used to cross the Channel in 20 minutes carrying 500 people or 246 people and 30 cars.
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