Recently in Retro Category

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

Alright, I'm stretching the description a bit, but there is some UK content on Lockheed Martin's F-35 you just have to squint abit to see it and it's stood next to the greatest fighter of World War II made by those fine folks at Supermarine in Eastleigh. And yes, I'm aware this blog is starting to turn into an F-35 love-in, but it's a lovely shot. It's even got a sunset - what more could you want?

Lockheed Martin

I know, it's developing into a little bit of an obsession, I guess I'm just a sucker for a retro livery. So, taken from Flightglobal's AirSpace forum, courtesy of user Flightstar, is this picture of a retro-liveried Airbus A320 operated by Air Malta.

Credit: Flightstar gallery on Flightglobal/AirSpace 

Cracking shot from Marcel Vöse in Germany of a Boeing 767-300 operated by leisure carrier Condor in a new retro livery (if that isn't oxymoronic). Marcel writes: "On Monday 30th July this had just left the paintshop at Air Livery for a two-hour testflight back to Manchester."

The 767 carries the registration EI-CRF and was formerly operated by Alitalia.

Credit: Marcel Vöse

Although Australia has had a little bit of a difficult relationship with its retired General Dynamics F-111Cs of late - most notably burying a whole bunch of them in a landfill - it has retained one of its Aardvarks for posterity. Pictured here is aircraft A8-142 on a road trip from RAAF Base Amberley, Queensland, to RAAF Base Wagga, New South Wales.

Credit: Commonwealth of Australia

A trip up to London yesterday and a walk along Picadilly took me past the window of Iran Air's office (sadly in the process of moving to Hammersmith Road). Displayed in said window was a model of a Boeing 747 in the old seventies livery. Although I was unable to find a picture of one in the flesh, here's another golden oldie in the shape of a Boeing 727, pictured in 1975 on its way in to London Heathrow. The aircraft - EP-IRB - continued flying until 2002, when it was parked in Tehran.

Credit: AirTeamImages

The Lockheed Martin F-35 gets a lot of bad press: programme delays, flight test woes, cost overruns, budget scrutiny... the list is depressingly long. All that, of course, obscures what a piece of work the JSF is. Now it's got a rare piece of good news with Japan's decision to pick it to replace its aging F-4 Phantom IIs. An interesting fact too: the F-35 has never lost a fighter contest it's been entered into. So, by way of celebration, here's a shot of the Lightning II with its older, illustrious namesake, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

Picture copyright Rex Features 

Pilot lands Fokker Dreidecker aircraft on its nose at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, Cambridgeshire, UK on 12 July 2011.

Upon landing, the WW1 fighter aircraft was forced onto its nose after a sudden gust of wind.

Philip Tyler, an aircraft enthusiast and photographer said: "The Dreidecker did a display to show the sort of fighting that would have taken place during a typical dog-fight in the First World War.

"The plane has triple wings so develops a lot of lift and appears to float in the air when it is flying, which allows for some impressive manoeuvres in the air.

"But all that lift has a downside when coming into land as the slightest breeze can play havoc.

"On this occasion the plane landed when it must have caught a breeze which was just enough to unbalance it."

So, this is what happened, but what caption would you add?

oOo

Links

Flightglobal archive: Fokker search term 

Flightglobal archive: Anthony Fokker obituary

British Airways has repainted one of its Boeing 757-200s in a retro livery, dating back 27 years, to mark the retirement of the type from its fleet this month.