Recently in Historical Category

With the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters raid - Operation Chastise - here's a couple of pictures to commemorate the event. First up is this shot of an Avro Lancaster from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight taken by AirSpace user Sunshine Band. More details on the history of this particular bomber is here. The second image comes from the UK Ministry of Defence showing the same Lancaster performing a fly-past over Derwent reservoir in the Peak District, a key training location for the raid.

This from regular AirSpace contributor Martin Needham: "On 12 May 2013, Andre Tempest's Handley-Page Victor, XL231 "Lusty Lindy" roared into life and performed her first taxi run in almost three years. She is seen here kicking up the spray left by a downpour on what was a grim Yorkshire day."

As one of the few parts of the British Isles (and here someone may wish to correct my geographical ignorance) occupied by the Germans in the Second World War, Jersey has a rich inheritance of fortifications left over from that period and, among the older generation, a difficult relationship with their former occupiers. So quite what they made of the return, in 1967, of these Luftwaffe aircraft (a Messerschmitt Bf 109 - with Rolls-Royce engines, apparently - and a Heinkel He 111) we can only guess. Apparently they stopped off briefly in the Channel Island on their way to film The Battle of Britain. Thanks to local photographer Mick Bellee for the images.

To my mind a Viscount will forever be a small chocolate-covered biscuit in a green and silver wrapper, but clearly this Vickers-built airliner offers a different standpoint. The image of the Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount 700D, captured in Salisbury in the 1970's, was posted on our AirSpace gallery by user flyvertosset.

User sunshine band posted this lovely shot of a Supermarine Spitfire to our AirSpace site. Nice, eh?

Top snapping from Demetrius Vanspranghe, one of the photographers shortlisted for Flight International's front-cover contest, who took this classy shot of a Junkers Ju52/3m at Brussels Air Museum in Belgium.

Glorious image here of a Supermarine Spitfire posted on our AirSpace site. Part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, the iconic fighter was snapped by user sunshine band at RAF Waddington. 

Boeing is saying a big happy birthday to the youngest member of  the US Air Force's B-52 Stratofortress fleet which was delivered from its Wichita facilty a half-century ago. The H-model bomber - 61-040 - was assigned to Minot AFB, North Dakota, and remains in active service. Here it is earlier in its life:

Boeing

Because I linger on the mailing list of a number of logistics companies, I still receive the odd truck and trailer releases. Still, they occasionally yield some gems like this series of pictures from Dutch heavy haulage firm Van der Vlist, which shows the company moving a beautifully restored Fokker F-27 to a position of prominence at a logistics park that occupies the site of the former Fokker factory near Schiphol. (And if anyone cares, that appears to be a rather nice MAN TG-X heavy haulage prime mover too).

Van der Vlist