PHOTO of the DAY...

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
28/05/15

Another day whereby the inexplicable 'magnetic' forces originating from Blackbushe drag me to the keyboard by 6am. Most unreasonable of Blackbushe I'd say, the need for some extra beauty sleep would no doubt be recognised if this was a webcam presentation..thankfully, it isn't!

So tucked into the hunched over keyboard posture, cup of tea steaming alongside, one waits for the inexplicable forces from Blackbushe to lend inspiration, and ...

..looks like we're going back to snaps from long ago fly-ins?


Days of wood, steel tube and canvas..

Totally unable to put a date on this, early seventies maybe, not important. In those days aeroplanes were more touchy feely things. I guess one manhandled them somewhat more, and canvas covered bodies always felt so good - like so many aeroplanes felt in those days. Note how good it was to see the north of Blackbushe a clear and open space, not the uncontrolled overgrowth that has been allowed to take it over during the past sad years.



The Flying Flea

It makes my exploits in the Aeronca 100 look totally civilised! The Pou de Ciel as she was known interprets as "Louse of the skies"...not a confidence building name, but who cares about the name when you have such air conditioned discomfort awaiting you? This was at another ancient fly-in that can be roughly dated by evidence on the right of the picture. The council and their local chums were in the process of destroying the airfield's eastern end as evidenced by the freshly crumbled apron and our white posts with concrete bottoms marking where we thought Vigo Lane was. The posts had a dynamic quality employed as and when necessary, the enemy would try and take every inch of our precious airfield that they could. Conversely, we retaliated on a reciprocal heading.. Vigo Lane. The magic line across the airfield where anything that lay to the east of it had to be subjected to devastation far greater than the Luftwaffe could have hoped to achieve during that tragic period where we and they were on opposing sides.


..and talking of conflict,


The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight make an impromptu transit through the circuit

We can look forward to one of their precious flock popping into Blackbushe later this summer.

...talking of the Luftwaffe,


Blackbushe Air Festival, 1977

Carrying the Army's Green Berets parachute team we achieved something Mr Hitler failed to. Serving soldiers parachuted from a JU-52 onto British soil...with JU-52's in suitable colours hanging around the airfield it seemed daft not to use them. The Green Berets were very happy for the experience and Doug Arnold was happy to give me his aeroplane for the occasion.

We no longer have the Warbirds of Great Britain resident at Blackbushe, and those wonderful hangars in the background are no longer on Airport land..Today they are full of pre-owned motors waiting to be auctioned off - just a few years ago they were the birthplace of 'new' Spitfires as Doug Arnold's team rebuilt sad and battered Spits into once more the most beautiful aeroplane that mankind could wish for.



The one and only Neil Williams, a Spitfire, and Blackbushe

Have a good day, one and all..
PB

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[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
29/05/15

As the clock ticks past 05.30 LT, northern Hampshire, I don't think the management at the Blackbushe "one-stop" Forum can be accused of not being dedicated..?? One has to cram in what one can while one can so here we are...

So what now? Well, out of curiosity just looking at Blackbushe movements in May, 1955 - a mere 60 years ago - the following have jumped out at me.


Airwork's hard working Airspeed Consul, G-AIKR. Airwork's hangar on Blackbushe 'north'

This little treasure was based at Blackbushe from 1950 to 1958 working her socks off for one of our long term tennants , Airwork Ltd.. She added to the May '55 movements at Blackbushe.





Eagle Airway's home based Lancaster, NX739, was busy flying in May, '55.. Eagle's hangar on Blackbushe 'south'


No photos this time, you'll just have to imagine it, but on 15th May, 1955, BOAC Constellation was at Blackbushe and conducted 9 landings during the day's training session.. Got the picture??
Just out of interest, some more Blackbushe movements in May, 1955...VT-DAW Indian Airlines DC-4, WJ342 RAF Hastings, Iraqi Air Force Bristol 170 unknown reg, masses of US Navy traffic including Neptunes, C-54s, Mercators, Albatross, Savages... DH Mosquito 4X-3175 departed Blackbushe on delivery to the Israeli Air Force. There were many many more, was Blackbushe not an airfield worth knowing?

Throughout the fifties it was a mecca for the aeroplane enthusiast regardless of the level of interest he, or she, may have had on the subject of aviation.. Blackbushe was simply that big airport on the A30.


A bit more imagination called for now..... While undergoing my regular 'keep the heart ticking' exercise regime walks on Blackbushe the old deserted runways always conjure up a myriad visions. They are unstoppable. The many who gave their lives flying just one more mission during the war, the thousands of air passengers who looked out of their windows and saw the same land that I was surveying, but looking very different back then..


Views like this would have been very different back in the fifties..



Especially when viewed with this kind of power plant array outside your window..



Pretty impressive from the outside too!!

Since my heart attack, now two years ago, I tend to use Blackbushe as my life support system in that it makes the need to walk the more interesting!! The imagination blends with the memory, and makes for interesting, and emotional exercise. Sometimes I wonder if the frustration and rising anger I feel at seeing how this great aviation asset has been so badly mistreated is perhaps detrimental to my prospects while I endure the two miles of runways and taxiways that lie there tombstone silent?

That's all for now, the smell of freshly baking bread wafting from the kitchen suggests its time to go...

PB

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
30/05/15

My brain is indulging in some kind of 6am frenzied dance amid the memories as to which way to take the very last edition of POTD.

The last edition this week, and with time seriously rationed today the mental contortions had better sort themselves out PDQ. OK, a notion for today has just arrived..

Many Blackbushe devotees will recall the period around the seventies/eighties era when Farnborough Week produced shoals of visitors whose arrival by air necessitated leaving their aeroplanes at Blackbushe. For many years this produced in me a seasonal urge to spend the week worshiping the the soil our aerodrome was built upon. Probably akin to the Druids at Stonehenge at the solstice celebrations, but not dressed in quite the same manner. These blessed weeks at Blackbushe resulting in either a great tan, or pneumonia, were given totally freely (mug?) as they were my idea and each morning was spent hurtling round chasing visitors' aeroplanes and looking after the parking/marshalling so as to result in the most impressive line-ups we could manage. The greatly missed Roger Russell joined me in these escapades as did Dave Hill whose orange jump suit always gave away his location.. They were truly hallowed days. When else since 1960 could you expect a good number of varied visitors descending on the old airfield for a whole week?


In the earlier years the apron served as the prime visitor parking area - what the council had left of it...










Fair weather - or not so fair - with the passing years we migrated to parking on the one of the spare runways, with impressive effect when it filled both sides.





My cars were utilised as "Follow Me" vehicles when necessary or a back-up to the taxi company who provided a shuttle from the runway to the Terminal..being amid the action on Blackbushe was, to me, the perfect way to spend a week's holiday away from the demands of life in commercial aviation at one of the other 'London' airports!


I can't help wondering what life must have been like in the years prior to 1960 when full timers spent their lives amid somewhat larger aeroplanes at Blackbushe doing something a bit similar??



What must be a Hermes takes up the well known, "Where's the marshaller?" pose .. bit different to our Farnborough Weeks, but just imagine!!



The runways are all very different today. As one has done for the past 55 years, we still wonder what tomorrow will bring to these silent memorials to a glorious past?



PB

Comment made... blackbusheairport.proboards.com/post/1605

[PB]

"Photo of the day"
31/05/2015


FIFTY FIVE YEARS AGO - TODAY - THIS STOPPED
















Our paper's front page carried a small report headed, "Bye, bye Blackbushe".. the Government had chosen to close London's Second Airport.

Not quite.... although thousands lost their employment, some airlines went out of business, and the nation lost one of its finest assets, Blackbushe was not ready to say, "Bye, bye...". Not quite.

Thank you Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. Bennett. You truly saved the airport from total annihilation.

Thank you Douglas Arnold. Whatever people might say, you gave us warbirds and kept Blackbushe alive.

Thank you BCA, You upgraded the Airport, but took away our hangars.

..and now, "Thank you" Blink Ltd to whom we turn to the future.

PB

After a pair of Vikings departed on 31 May 1960 the final recorded movements on this day were....

US Navy R5D-5, 39120, the very last US Navy movement until the Airport's 50th Anniversary when we invited them back. The Paine's bright red Proctor, G-AHNA, Bee's Flight Auster 5, G-AMPW, and last of all Bristow Helicopters' Westland Widgeon, G-APTE.

[PB]

Photo of the Day, 31st May, 2015.

Second Edition

As reported in today's 'first edition', the Vickers Viking was the very last commercial airliner to leave Blackbushe Airport before its closure.

She may have cold feet in this photo, and who can blame her being forced into a new life away from home..This is the aeroplane whose last take-off from Blackbushe was also the last commercial airline movement as she positioned to a new airfield in West Sussex. A new airfield that still only has one runway.


... on this day in 1960, Orion's G-AHOS had the sad duty of offering the final farewell to the much loved airport known as Blackbushe... Never again would a Viking be seen where at least 31 of the type had been based..


Tragically, the move proved too much, Orion Airways ceased operations by the end of the year.

PB

Comment posted by HP81 blackbusheairport.proboards.com/post/1619

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
01/06/15

The first day of June.

Following my submission yesterday noting the loss of fifty five years since Blackbushe was closed - reduced from the role of major London Airport to a north-east Hampshire wasteland in seemingly no less time than it takes a traffic warden to slap a 'yellow' on your windscreen when your time runs out. Poor old Blackbushe, poor airport employees, poor resident airlines and operators including the United States of America. All given the red card by faceless referees of a faceless bureaucracy while the local piranhas must have salivated uncontrollably at the prospect of devouring London's second airport and turning its bones into a useless wasteland. The east end of Blackbushe, now unkempt common, bears testimony to such ambitions once unbridled...

The plan below shows Blackbushe as she would have looked on this day in 1960. Well, not quite as this is a snap shot of 1952 Blackbushe, the largest omission is the US Navy hangar and complex that was still to be built on the airfield's north-east.



I would have been at school on this day fifty five years ago. The silence emitting from the sky was tangible. No more red topped rumbling Vikings in the circuit, no more US Navy transports and their varied contributions, no more performances of 'The Sound of Merlins' from Avro's four engined survivors, no this was the new age of silence.

It does not take a great deal of imagination to glean the atmosphere that must have pervaded the now silent Airport on this day, fifty five years ago. Staff were to be fired, or relocated to new bases..but first they had to clear out all that had been their working lives to this point. Those offices in the Terminal, some of which survive to this day, would have been buzzing with tear stained staff whose remaining tasks at Blackbushe were to vacate their working homes and abandon all to the hands of the demolition gangs whose jaws were soon to snap at the airfield boundary.

Scenes such as airliners releasing their passengers to the Blackbushe tarmac were gone for all time. At least that was the hope of those behind the waiting demolition gangs.


All you see in his photo is now an 'open-space', a tangled waste land - the hangar in the background, part of Airwork's complex can be seen in the lower photograph during its painful death


Blackbushe died despite the heroic stand her crews made during the dark years of World War Two in defence of our freedom so as our adversaries would not destroy what was precious to us. Her destruction was achieved in the most incredibly short time. The association planned by Blackbushe's resident airlines to purchase and save the Airport were steam rollered in their efforts. At all cost, it appeared, Blackbushe was destined to die, to be put down in the shortest possible period. The government had placed their money on another horse.

I'm not ashamed to say that, as a teenager with a deep emotional streak that had adhered me to this wonderful aerodrome, I stood by my trusty bike where I had stood a thousand times before, surveyed the woeful scene....



..and cried.

No longer do the tears fall, the passing of many years have seen to that, but maybe a new and brighter future for Blackbushe is about to dawn? Her heart has never really stopped, it was kept alive by those who fought to save her in the sixties, but if she rises to a new and greater aviation life under her new ownership tears may return. This time they'll be tears of joy.

PB

Comment received..http://blackbusheairport.proboards.com/post/1631

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
02/06/15


Another 'exciting' day of varied commitments, meetings and discussions with the Doctor ... There's always something to make retirement exciting with perhaps the exception of the medical aspect where sometimes we have to face our worries. But that's hours away and much is to be done beforehand, so today's POTD will be brief, to the point, and hopefully accurate...

POTD has never made a commitment to relaying just the old Blackbsuhe days in pictures and lots of adjectival gymnastics. Today we are bang up to date.

The new owners of Blackbushe have sent me some photos by the magic of email...


Not just, "My jet", but " My Airport" too... as members of Blink's Blackbushe team accompany a new member of their fleet on Blackbushe's apron.
Apologies for quality of this shot, I had technical issues.



Rainbows are said to bring good luck, or even lead you to a pot of gold...


Where 'Blinkbirds' fly...




From little acorns, mighty oaks do grow...?


It should be emphasized that this photo was not taken at London's Blackbushe Airport, not yet anyway!




We hope blue skies lie ahead for both Blink and Blackbushe..




The power over Blackbushe today, tomorrow....


I'm sure we all wish Blink the very best of fortune both in the air with the growing Mustang fleet, and on the ground with their recently acquired airport....London Blackbushe.

PB

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
03/06/15

Another POTD moment looms ahead..Perhaps today a look back into the distant past having focused on more current affairs recently.

The style today is a monochrome look at a Curtiss C-46 Super Commando. This being N4086A arriving at Blackbushe on 20th February, 1959, a demonstrator belonging to L B Smith Aviation at the time.


Short finals with the Airwork complex in the background.



Anyone conversant with the layout of Blackbushe will note that the main runway is not being employed on this approach. The Dunlops are dangling over the heads of those travelling the A30, the C-46 being on short finals for runway 32. When the wind suggested it was advisable 32 was employed, otherwise it made useful additional parking space for those days when Heathrow was below limits and their diversions arrived at Blackbushe.

Imagine, if you will, the sight and sound of these large prop driven transports crossing the A30 at low level, plenty of power with gear and flaps dragging, and the motorists' expression as their windscreen filled up with a large quantity of passing aluminium! Complete with their wonderful sound effects...


For reference...


Runway 32 in 2015 courtesy of government planning and local intervention toward its present status



Anyway, having got that off my chest, the C-46 starring in today's POTD had an interesting life ahead of her... She joined the CIA. Obviously we don't want to say that too loud, you never know who might be listening in to POTD's secrets, but from the the Air and Space website I read... "C-46F Super C of Intermountain Airways at Marana Airpark, Arizona on January 16, 1971. Intermountain Airways was formed by the Central Intelligence Agency to perform covert operations in 1963. The registration of this Commando is N9900Z. Its Curtiss construction number is 26593. It was upgraded to "T" category C-46 with single stage superchargers and hydraulic boosted ailerons, so that it could carry passengers as well as cargo. It was formerly registered N4086A. It was acquired by Evergreen Airlines when they purchased Intermountain Airways in October 1975. Evergreen operated it until February 1978. Challenge International Airlines acquired it in June 1978 but ceased operations in the late 1980s. N9900Z may have recently changed hands again....". It's here with pictures.. www.air-and-space.com/Curtiss%20C-46%20survivors.htm

Air Britain have a better quality photo on view of our featured aeroplane on the ground at Blackbushe. www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1098248/

Getting late, it's gone 06.00 and I've got to finish a lengthy submission to ? regarding an airfield - and its future.....the wheels never stop. Fun though!

PB

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
04/06/15

A curious blue has been reported in the skies of northern Hampshire, it's still early but could be a touch of the weather we tend to associate with the month of June in the offing? Of course, I've got to zoom off for a few hours in the line of duty..ain't that the way? At least it'll be sunny.

Talking of sunny, it's funny how memories tend to recall the sunny side of life. Not always, but looking back one recalls bright days over miserable ones. I guess a miserable memory goes back to day one of the Blackbushe 50th Anniversary in '98. It poured monsoon style all day. Second day, sunshine and nearly 300 visitors - aircraft visitors, that is...

The photo below fell out of the history book this morning...


Blackbushe Air Festival, 30/31 July 1977

The sun shone that weekend thank heavens. Looking at the photo which was taken at the end of the end of the first day of the Blackbushe Air Festival I notice your scribe is in view, but also I've just spotted my Dad who passed away a couple of years later. Lump in the throat time, I miss him just as much today...but moving on, that was indeed a happy time, if not a bit hard on the nerves running an event involving aeroplanes, people, money and luck..I think we got the aeroplanes, we got the people, we got luck with the sunshine, but the money side. Taken to the cleaners by our so called 'event managers'...oh yes, and the airport owner who demanded a very large share of our takings. I have no regrets over the Air Festival project. I wanted to see Blackbushe handle some descent aeroplanes, put the name Blackbushe into the eyes of the public, and make some memories - we did!


Doug Arnold's Meteor

Another view of the Meteor in today's first photo. Seen here in the colours being worn on arrival to join the Arnold Air Force. Must have been 1975/76? I still recall her arrival on 26 ( as it was then) with Neil Williams at the wheel as if it was yesterday. Funny thing this memory...

Bye..
PB

[PB]

"Photo of the Day"
05/06/15

Living on an island lodged on the eastern extremes of the Atlantic Ocean provides an endless talking point. The weather. Not only can it spoil your day's flying, it provides an endless variety in our mood and outlook on life.

Between his displays at the Blackbushe Air Festival I asked Lt Cmdr Pete Shepherd of the RN historic Flight for his opinion on 'British weather'....


nuff said..



Going back in time, and thousands of occluded fronts later, I'm getting one of those old wishes that we could see Blackbushe "as was"... Just a quick stroll across an unmolested apron with some of the home based fleet ready for the day's work..


Some of Eagle's Vikings, a 100% Terminal Building, superb apron lighting that had a whole apron to illuminate. It did, nicely



Not only the memories are fuzzy...


Another home based beauty, US Navy Super Dak...



Hopefully the memories, fuzzy or not, will continue to support POTD for a while yet.

Looking out for more Blink directed suggestions and/or questions from the Forum while we still have the opportunity - and ear - of our new Airport owners...

Thank you.
PB