Aeroplane Magazine No.489 Running the Gauntlet Back Issue

It has been another incredible month here at Aeroplane. During late
October I was invited to the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s end of season dinner. Of course the Flight’s Avro Lancaster I PA474 was a focal point of the commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the Dam Busters raid back in May 2013. So it was a great delight when I found out that Dams raid veteran George “Johnny” Johnson was to be an after dinner speaker. “Johnny” recounted his part on the raid with great
attention to detail, and you could have heard a pin drop as everyone at the dinner – including high-ranking RAF Staff officers – was totally captivated by his talk. While the dinner, by its very name, suggested I would no longer be seeing and hearing the Flight’s aircraft flying around my Lincolnshire home on their way to or from RAF Coningsby as the season was over, I had also received an invite from Kenny Love at the Temora Aviation Museum to visit there for the fantastic Warbirds Downunder air show. So if I was to attend that I could get one last air show in before the year was out! The invite also included one of just a few places onboard a media photo flight on the Thursday evening before the Saturday air show. This was to be from the ramp of one of the HARS Caribous – and I do hope you like the resultant pictures of some of the amazing formations that the pilots flew for us. It is also a perfect issue in which to include them, as our Aircrew series covers just this subject in this issue. After the air show I made my way to Canberra to visit the Australian War Memorial, and during the build up to Remembrance Day was very impressed by how the Australians honour and commemorate their fallen military personnel with just as much thought as we do here in the UK. I was moved to stand by the RAAF portion of the AWM’s bronze Roll of Honour, decorated with thousands of the most beautiful poppies I have ever seen, no doubt placed adjacent to the names by family and friends.