CDR Salamander - Fullbore Friday

It was only 2019 that I first posted this…but given the news about the UK defense cuts…now is a good time too.

How do you protest draconian defense cuts?

Well, this is one way.

Alan loved the RAF and felt its 50th anniversary should be celebrated with a flypast over London. There had been an official dinner and a few parades — but no flypast. This, he felt, was a terrible slight.

‘One thing that was in the Air Force’s blood was that you celebrated in the air, not on the ground,’ Alan, now 82, says at his home in Surrey.

He was serving at the time in No. 1 Squadron. This is the RAF’s oldest unit and as such he believed it had a responsibility to take the lead in ensuring the half-centenary was celebrated properly.

Alan decided to take matters into his own hands by staging a flypast of his own.

On April 4, Alan and three other Hunter pilots from his squadron had flown from their base at West Raynham in Norfolk to RAF Tangmere in Sussex, the former home of No. 1 Squadron, where they were helping to celebrate the base being given the freedom of the city of Chichester. He decided that the following day, on their way back, he would make a detour over the capital.

‘It was worth flying over London, even if I was going to get court-martialled,’ Alan says. At the very least, a trial would give him a chance to have his say on the problems facing the Air Force.

Read the whole thing from 2018 ... and watch the video.

On a personal note - I love the Hunter. I see them fly on a not infrequent basis, as some are owned by a civilian “Red Air” company that visits my airspace now and then.

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